Social Psychology - week 10

Running Head : Group Think

Group Think and Polarization

indicate your name here

indicate the name of your professor here

indicate the academic institution here

Group think has been defined to be a cohesive in-group 's way of thinking wherein motivations to come up with realistic appraisals of alternative causes of action are overridden by the desire or striving for unanimity (Irving , 1972 . Such may be caused by directive leadership , the homogenous social background and ideology of members in the group , as well as isolation of the group from other sources of

information and analysis that is beyond the confines of the groups ' environment (McCauley , 1989 . Group think has been highly discouraged because it could lead to faulty decision-making that is consensus-driven rather than by careful analysis and scrutiny of facts and circumstances that would ultimately solve the problem at hand (Kamau Harorimana , 2008

I have experienced group think and its negative effects when I worked with a group in one of my subjects . All of the members except for one person came from the same program or course , the lone individual in our group came from another discipline of study . We had to formulate solutions to the problem the teacher gave us . The person , who was taking up another type of course from us , had different views in approaching the problem . However , her ideas were set aside because we all have the same views in solving the problem as proposed by our group leader who came from...