Decision-making: ouch, Groupthink! Shake it off.
This is the fourth story in a series on decision-making, from psychological, economic and organisational perspectives. You may also be interested in my previous stories on cognitive process , motivational process and other individuals' influences on decision-making.
Summary: in this story, I discuss the prevalent influences of groups and inter-groups on our decision-making. We tend to conform to group norms and are subject to groupthink. We may hold stereotypes and prejudice — either explicit or implicit, towards certain groups of individual; in worst cases, we may discriminate them. I reflect on how we may shake off group influences.
Here is, again, my plan for the whole series on how we make decisions. This fourth story will cover influence of groups and inter-groups in psychological influences on individual decision-making.
Psychological influences come in two directions: internal and external. Internally, we are subject to our own cognitive process and motivational process. Externally, we are often swayed by other individuals, our own groups and other groups.
Influences of Groups
When I was in primary and secondary schools, kids were always in groups. I was terrified to be kicked out of a group as this would mean — no other groups would accept me, I would be socially isolated due to unknown reasons and I would be lonely. It had horrible social consequence. When I started to work, I realised groups were critical for gathering information about internal politics, for promotion, for power play and for simply doing one's job smoothly.
Conformity is one's adherence to the groups one is in. Conformity could be in terms of opinions, actions, decisions that fit the norms of that group. Conformity happens when you think the group collectively has more correct information or when you desire to fit in and share the same group identity.
I find it hard to resist conformity particularly when the group seems to reach complete agreement. My disagreement would make me an outlier and have undesirable social consequence. It takes extra confidence and assurance to bring out an objection. You better have a strong case to challenge the group decision or you will look bad. The larger the group, the harder not to conform. This happens constantly at workplaces. Usually, there is a good share of opinions at the beginning of the meeting. When someone senior starts to avocate a decision, the group starts to converge. Though you may have a different take, you eventually may self doubt yourself into conformity. This is particularly so, when the decision is difficult and uncertain.
Researchers have suggested two ways to reduce conformity. One way is to make decision privately instead of publicly (e.g., anonymous vote), thus reducing the tendency to conform. The other way is to write down your opinions or decisions in a paper to remind yourself before the group meeting to reduce the influence of conformity. Both are reasonable suggestions. I may add one tiny detail though — real anonymity needs to be guaranteed. A vote that can only be casted on one's company desktop will never be perceived as anonymous no matter how much the company assured.
Groupthink is closely related to conformity, yet from a different angle. Conformity is individual's desire to adhere to the group, while Groupthink denotes the majority of group members' desire for agreement.
Groupthink is dangerous because when it happens, members often lose the ability to evaluate their decisions. They are blindly immersed in the illusion of unanimity and success. They fail to notice signs or thoughts that may go against the superficial group consensus but could be the critical. Oftentimes, the dominant group members exert power over any disagreeing members, forcing them to adopt the dominant view. What's worse, the group may block members from exposure of opposing information and regard those who share a different / opposing views as traitors. All in all, groupthink is bad for organisations and often leads to bad decision-making.
Now that I look back into my corporate life, groupthink happens way more than I expect. The company is lucky that the group happens to think in the right direction. It could go south easily wit this line of decision-making.
Researchers propose different ways to mitigate groupthink. Organisations should foster open dialogue — members need to feel safe and free to share their ideas and not being criticised. Though as good as it sounds, oftentimes, these kinds of open dialogue are regarded as superficial. No one takes it seriously. It goes without saying that a mass management email with a somewhat strong open dialogue advocation is never enough. A mere shout-out of "we welcome any suggestions, comments and criticism. Please do share" is 100% useless. We all know too well in the corporate environment that this is all just management showtime. I am not saying that all management does this for show. I do believe most management sets out from good intention and genuine effort to change. The fact is that they are not perceived as such. From my experience, it requires managers at all levels to practice open dialogue on a daily basis to build trust at the root.
Have you really expressed your actual opinion in a company-wide meeting, without fearing that you would be judged or kicked out of certain ally group later?
Researchers also suggest that leaders must make effort to bring in opposing positions and avoid insulation and that leaders should neither impose their positions ahead of the meeting nor challenge any opposing views. This makes perfect sense yet it requires a wise leader. Another way to avoid groupthink, as researchers recommend, is to assign some members of group to play the role of opponents, suggesting ideas that contradict to the group's dominant view. It is not hard to see that all these helpful suggestions take a lot of effort and intention. As far as my work experiences tell, groupthink is prevalent, invasive and sadly, I've never met a leader who could actually be wise enough to fight it successfully.
Group polarisation is the tendency for a group's belief and attitudes to go more extreme than the initial belief and attitudes of individual members.
Polarisation is tearing our societies apart at many countries. In Asia, we often joked about America’s political polarisation but we are no better. We may be less politically polarised due to historic and politic system differences (this is not something to be proud of, either) but we are nonetheless polarised in our culture-tolerance, ethnicity equality and gender parity.
Do you feel that you become louder and more confident when someone shows agreement (e.g., nodding) with you? I have noticed myself behaving this way. And I don't like it.
Researchers explain that when we express an extreme opinion and others agree with more reasons, our extreme opinion is amplified. Besides, others may offer even more extreme opinions, and we feel compelled to get in line with the group. All together, group is polarised towards more risky or more cautious — two extremes. Unfortunately, this is happening in Hong Kong.
De-individuation happens in many riots and social unrests, where anonymity occurs with deep immersion in group and personal identity is disguised by masks or symbolic clothes.
De-individuation causes us to lose our identity, self-awareness and sometimes, self-control, leading to violent, impulsive, reckless behaviours. I think de-individuation is the most extreme form of group influence, where we seems to be sheltered under a group identity and perform anti-social actions that are aroused at the heat of the moment. We unreasonably feel our reckless actions are heroic and just.
In my opinions, many social movement starts out from a reasonable cause and always strives for collective good. However, a good movement is easily deviated by some extreme thoughts from a few individual members, ruining the whole mission.
Inter-group Influences
Inter-group influences lie in the idea of “us vs. them”. We look at people from the standpoint of our own group and generalise people based on the social categories that they are in. We judge behaviours and process information differently, depending on whether the source is from our own group members or outgroup members.
It seems to me inter-group influences happen strongly among nationalists. People tend to make excuses for their own people's bad behaviours, while display fairly low tolerance for the same behaviours from other peoples.
Inter-group influences boil down to stereotypes (beliefs about certain groups), prejudice (negative attitudes towards certain groups) and discrimination (hostile behaviours towards certain groups).
We always categorise people. Though as much as I try to fight it, I often see myself fall back into this trap again and again. Categorising helps us automatically make sense of the world, to form initial impression and offers a sense of assurance. Stereotype is bad. It often simplifies perceptions, ignores individual differences, exaggerates group norms and prevents us to revise our judgement.
Oftentimes, one has to fulfil certain stereotype in order to be accepted in a profession. A mere demonstration of capability is not enough. You need to adhere to group characteristics to be successful, as you will need support and resources from the group. Thus, the person, who climb the career ladder the fastest, is often the one who knows how to fulfil a certain stereotype.
Stereotype heavily influences our decision-making process. Gender stereotype affects hiring in that certain occupations tend to prefer a specific gender, leading to unfair evaluations.
Women are caring, soft and less assertive. Men are calm, strong and confident. Salespersons are talkative and people pleaser. Professors are serious and boring. Rich people are smarter. Poor people know less. Stereotyping is horrible.
Prejudice is a pre-formed negative attitude towards another group even before any interaction with members of that group. Prejudice is deep rooted. Sometimes, we are aware of it and try to fight it; oftentimes, it goes unnoticed, infiltrates into our workplace, impacts our hiring, promotion and relationship.
I think hidden prejudice is most detrimental. As an Asian lady who used to work in a patriarchal industry, I know how hard women need to fight the inherent prejudice to get fair evaluation.
Discrimination is the actual hostile behaviours originating from prejudice. Discrimination happens at personal and institutional level, where differential treatment incurs according to the groups one is in, i.e. racial, gender and cultural. Discrimination costs the overall welfare of our societies and has detrimental effect on victims' mental health. Though many countries have laws against discrimination, this issue is deep-rooted and persisted in our daily life.
The single most disturbing question that is bothering me while researching for this story is how we could shake off group influences. In a world where groups extend beyond schools and communities into digital platforms, online groups have more power than ever. The vanity to get likes, followers and subscription, has promoted group adherence. You need to produce content that is trending, popular and eye catching. In light of this, I could think of a few ways that we may try to shake off group influences.
- keep a cool head and remind yourself that the whole group/society may be wrong. The correct way is to really understand what is actually happening, even if the group seems to be right.
- be aware that anyone can be misinformed and no one is seeing the full picture of anything — not even a group of people/experts/persons that you completely trust.
- constantly look for counter examples/disconfirming evidence.
- anchor yourself in the world surrounds you. The comfort of group belonging and adherence may come from the fear of making a wrong decision or judgement or loosing friends. Be prepared and ready to accept the undesirable consequence of any wrong decision.
References:
American Psychological Association PsycLearn: https://digitallearning.apa.org/psyc-learn
