Group Think and Group Polarization

Examples of group think

Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Challenger disaster

Group Polarization Activity

Filling out the survey and then getting in groups to talk about it

Irving Janis

Group think

Wisdom of crowd activity

Jelly beans

Why group polarization

Reason: persuasive argument account: once we hear more reasons for others argument so we "oh that's true never thought of that" (confirmation bias) Emotion: social comparison account: suggest we attempt to hold views that are better than other members ( we want to be the best republican or democrat)

Group Think

a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in group when the members striving for unanimity and override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action (people want to get along instead of coming to a realization)

Risky Shift

groups recommend riskier courses of action than individual group members (groups move us closer to the extremes)

Wisdom of crowds

if everyone in a group has similar expertise and each independently contributes an answer, the average of everyones answer is usually closer to the correct answer

Transactive Memory

people in close relationships know each others encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. They share information processing of remembering events.

Mind Guard

person who protects contrary information from getting to the leader

Group Polarization

the tendency for group decisions to be more extreme than those made by individuals. Whichever way individuals are leaning, group discussions tend to make them lean further in that direction.q