Groupthink - Irving Janis (1972;1982)
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Janis was interested by major policy-making decisions, such as

• The Bay of Pigs
• The Invasion of Pearl Harbour
• Appeasement in the 1930's

After analysing a variety of these events, he concluded that a set of small group processes were at work. He called these processes Group Think. He defined group think as such:

A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.

One thing to bear in mind is that we should not assign a primacy to psychological processes to the detriment of other factors such as political pressure, economic interests or institutional mechanisms.

Other Notes in this Category

1. Asch's Studies on Majority Influence
2. Dual Process Theory - Normative and Informational Influence
3. Groupthink - Irving Janis (1972;1982)
4. Moscovici and Minority Influence
5. Turner's Self-Categorisation Theory

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