What is groupthink?
Groupthink is the name for a group's drive for agreement overriding its appraisal of the alternatives. Experiments have since tested its ingredients one at a time.
Answer to the question
What is groupthink?
Groupthink is Irving Janis's 1972 term for a group's drive for agreement overriding its realistic appraisal of the alternatives, with symptoms such as self-censorship and pressure on dissenters. Experiments have tested its ingredients separately: threat and cohesion, one-sided information search in agreed groups, and how strongly members identify with the group.
Key takeaways
- Turner, Pratkanis, Probasco and Leve (1992) manipulated cohesion and threat to members' self-esteem across three experiments, and groups given an excuse for possible poor performance decided significantly better.
- Kerschreiter and colleagues (2008) found that groups who had already agreed preferred supporting information in three experiments, and only moderately confident groups adjusted their search to the task.
- In Packer's 2009 study of 78 undergraduates, strongly identified students voiced concern about harmful problems whether or not they believed others agreed.
- Janis built groupthink in 1972 and 1982 from reconstructions of decisions and not from experiments, and Fisher's The Collective Edge argues for structural remedies over the devil's advocate.
Irving Janis gave groupthink its textbook form, and Colin Fisher's The Collective Edge credits him for it.
Janis described a group whose wish for unanimity overrides its appraisal of the alternatives, with symptoms such as a sense of invulnerability, pressure on dissenters, self-censorship and an illusion that everyone agrees. The word has since been applied to a great many decisions. Experimenters have done something narrower, which is to take the ingredients of groupthink apart and test them one at a time.
A Theory Built From Parts Tested Separately
Janis set the account out in Victims of Groupthink and later revised it as Groupthink. Both books reconstructed decisions that were already known to have gone badly, tracing how each group had arrived at its choice. Janis did not test the account in experiments; the reconstructions were his support. The theory that came out of them has three kinds of ingredient: conditions in the group, a pattern of symptoms in its discussion, and a poor decision as the outcome. Cohesion is the condition most closely tied to the label.
A reconstruction after the fact cannot show which ingredient did the work, which is why researchers moved the question into the laboratory. Our earlier article, Does Groupthink Explain Bad Decisions, covers the case studies and the reviews of that research. The experiments here test the parts directly, and they point to a more varied picture of how groupthink arises than the single story the word suggests.
Three experiments reported in 1992 built the conditions for groupthink in the laboratory. Cohesion and threat to members' self-esteem were manipulated, and groups under both conditions made poor decisions. A second experiment confirmed that the cohesion manipulation had worked. In the third, the poor decisions appeared again, and groups under groupthink conditions that were given an excuse for possible poor performance decided significantly better.
The authors, M. E. Turner, A. R. Pratkanis, P. Probasco and C. Leve, read the pattern through social identity. They described groupthink as a collective effort to ward off negative views of the group. On that account, an excuse offers a way to explain poor performance without the group looking bad, which fits the improvement the third experiment found. It places the engine in how members feel about the group, beside the shared wish for harmony that Janis stressed.
When Agreement Comes Before the Discussion Even Starts
Every member of the groups in the next set of experiments had already chosen the same answer before any talking began. Rudolf Kerschreiter and colleagues published three experiments on such groups in 2008. Each group of three could request as many as it liked from ten expert statements, five backing the group's choice and five opposing it. Some groups were told they would write an essay justifying their decision, and others that they would take part in a debate refuting counterarguments.
Across all three experiments, the agreed groups preferred information that supported what they had already decided. The expected task changed this only for groups that were not very sure of themselves. Moderately confident groups searched in a balanced way, or even favoured opposing statements, when they expected to rebut counterarguments, and searched one-sidedly when they expected to justify. Highly confident groups favoured supporting information whichever task they expected. In the final experiment confidence was manipulated and not merely measured, and the same split appeared.
The searching was one-sided in groups that were simply agreed and confident. That is a narrower claim than Janis made, and it sits comfortably beside the 1992 result, since both locate the trouble in how a group handles its own shared view and not in any one person. The finding also belongs to the older family of confirmation bias, here shown at group level.
Colin Fisher's The Collective Edge draws a practical lesson that fits these findings. His argument is that the remedy for groupthink lies in how a group is organised and cannot be left to the courage of individual members. The measures he favours are these:
- outside perspectives brought into the group
- newcomers who have not yet absorbed its habits
- independent judgements gathered before they are combined
- protected dissent, tied to psychological safety
He is doubtful about appointing a devil's advocate, on the ground that advocacy is still only advocacy.
The structural point shows up on a small scale in the 2008 experiments. What changed the search of the moderately confident groups was the task they expected to face, and nothing about the people in the room.
Strong Attachment to the Group and Open Dissent
Do the members who feel most attached to a group stay quiet? A 2009 study by Dominic Packer put the question to students. It measured how strongly 78 undergraduates identified with their university, the measure that What is group identification? examines. Each student rated how harmful they privately judged a set of campus problems to be, estimated how harmful other students judged them, and then reported how concerned they were as an online discussion with three fellow students began.
Weakly identified students voiced concern mainly when they believed others shared it, and their public concern dropped when they believed others did not. Strongly identified students spoke up about the problems they judged harmful whether or not they believed others agreed. Identification was measured and not manipulated, which makes the pattern a correlation. Packer's reading was that members who care about a group are not necessarily silenced by the fear of disagreement. Attachment went with speaking up.
Common questions
What is groupthink?
Groupthink is Irving Janis's 1972 term for a group's drive for agreement overriding its realistic appraisal of the alternatives, with symptoms such as self-censorship and pressure on dissenters. Experiments since have tested its ingredients separately, among them threat, cohesion, one-sided information search and how strongly members identify with the group.
Who coined the term groupthink?
Irving Janis introduced groupthink as a theory in Victims of Groupthink in 1972 and revised it as Groupthink in 1982. Colin Fisher's The Collective Edge credits Janis for the concept. The theory was put to laboratory tests in the decades that followed, including the three experiments of 1992 described above and the three of 2008.
What are the symptoms of groupthink?
Janis listed eight symptoms in his account of how groupthink shows up in a group's discussion. Four that are often cited are a sense of invulnerability, pressure on dissenters, self-censorship by members and an illusion that everyone agrees.
Does an experiment show groupthink happening?
Experiments have tested parts of the theory and not the whole of it. A 1992 study found poorer decisions in groups under cohesion and threat, and a 2008 study found one-sided information search in groups that already agreed and were highly confident.
Sources
Fisher, C. M. (2025). The Collective Edge. Seed book; vault hub Books/The Collective Edge.
Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink.
Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink (2nd ed.).
Turner, M. E., Pratkanis, A. R., Probasco, P., & Leve, C. (1992). “Threat, cohesion, and group effectiveness: Testing a social identity maintenance perspective on groupthink.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(5), 781-796. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.5.781 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.5.781
Kerschreiter, R., Schulz-Hardt, S., Mojzisch, A., & Frey, D. (2008). “Biased information search in homogeneous groups: Confidence as a moderator for the effect of anticipated task requirements.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(5), 679-691. doi:10.1177/0146167207313934 https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167207313934
Packer, D. J. (2009). “Avoiding groupthink: Whereas weakly identified members remain silent, strongly identified members dissent about collective problems.” Psychological Science, 20(5), 546-548. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02333.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02333.x