Friday, June 26, 2009
Group Think
According to Eisenberg et. al, Groupthink occurs when team members go along with, rather than evaluate, the group’s proposals or ideas. Psychologist Irving Janis believes that this can be problematic in team decision making. I totally agree with Dr. Anis, groupthink can be a big problem. In my fraternity, there are times that groupthink occurs. I think this happens when members of an organization becomes too lazy to think for themselves, not confident about themselves so they fear that people won’t listen to them, or don’t care enough. Sometimes, when a respected leader speaks, members listen and sometimes just go along with him or her even though the leader himself or herself asks for their suggestions. I believe everyone can be a victim of groupthink, meaning someone who just go along with what the group thinks. I myself sometimes notice myself agreeing with the decision and then when I think about it realizes I disagree.
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Group think seems like it has a lot of people who are doing for whats best for the group rather then hear each individual out. Group think has happen many of times when working wothin a group. Instead of listening to everybody answer, their will always be one person who will constanly agree with what everybody says. I can admit that i have been guilty in the past, but i try to take more of the lead , rather then follow.
ReplyDeleteHello, SquEarl! I agree with you, and I also have a similar experience when I was a member of a vocal jazz ensemble (three women and three men). I would like to add one thing that groupthink tends to occur when the members lack "awareness of cultural differences." I was a newcomer for the jazz group and the only nonnative, but I started learning music at age four, so I knew musical theories even though I did not have a music degree. When the jazz group was falling into groupthink, I tried to fix the direction, but the strongest member, who had a music degree (B.A.) from SJSU and wanted to show how his musical competence was the highest in the group, did not take my words seriously because of my accent, or maybe appearance. The other members followed him without listening to me. (Actually, I was very sad and frustrated.) Then, we could not have good results. We could record only four songs in the CD that we produced bi-annually, but typically was more than six songs by the producer when our singing was good enough. I like this class by corresponding online because nobody realizes my accent!?
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