COMM 222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster
29 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
Groupthink is a group pressure phenomenon that increases the risk of the group making flawed decisions by leading to reduced mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment. Conditions leading to group think: cohesive group, difficult issue, past success, strong respected leader, isolation of the group from other sources of information. Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks: collective rationalization. Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions: belief in inherent morality. Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions: stereotyped views of out-groups. Negative views of enemy make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary: direct pressure on dissenters. Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group"s views: self-censorship. Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed: illusion of unanimity. The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous: self-appointed mindguards".
