Groupthink - Group Norms and Behaviour
Introduction
Good Morning! Imagine that an Australian university student invites an international university student to a barbeque. The international student comes from a country whose culture is very different to Australia’s. Unsure of themselves, the international student asks what they should wear and what they should bring to the barbeque. In response the Australian who invited them says ‘Wear what you want, and bring something to drink, and some meat, it’s a barbeque, it’s very laid back’. So the student dresses in a kilt (no underpants), brings a bottle of whisky, and a freshly skinned cow haunch. The Australians are surprised and can’t understand why the Scottish student has dressed like he has and brought what he did. An understanding by both parties of group norms would have enabled them to understand how mistakes were made and maybe how to fix them, possibly by enabling the Australians to including new behaviours into their group.
We are discussing the concept of group norms in Daniel, C. Feldman’s article ‘The Development and Enforcement of Group Norms’. We will tie this in with Irving Janis’ concept of groupthink, which is arguably caused by the development and enforcement of group norms. Daniel Feldman (1984, p.47) states that ‘group norms are the informal rules that groups adopt to regulate and regularise group members’ behaviour’ (Hackman, 1976 in Feldman 1984 p.47). When this happens it is possible and sometimes likely that bad or irrational decisions will be made. This is Janis’ groupthink, ‘a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action’ (Janis 1977 p.?). This is like peer group pressure stopping people in a group from arguing that drinking too much the night before an exam is a bad idea or that arriving drunk to a lecture will not be funny.
Feldman’s
Good Morning! Imagine that an Australian university student invites an international university student to a barbeque. The international student comes from a country whose culture is very different to Australia’s. Unsure of themselves, the international student asks what they should wear and what they should bring to the barbeque. In response the Australian who invited them says ‘Wear what you want, and bring something to drink, and some meat, it’s a barbeque, it’s very laid back’. So the student dresses in a kilt (no underpants), brings a bottle of whisky, and a freshly skinned cow haunch. The Australians are surprised and can’t understand why the Scottish student has dressed like he has and brought what he did. An understanding by both parties of group norms would have enabled them to understand how mistakes were made and maybe how to fix them, possibly by enabling the Australians to including new behaviours into their group.
We are discussing the concept of group norms in Daniel, C. Feldman’s article ‘The Development and Enforcement of Group Norms’. We will tie this in with Irving Janis’ concept of groupthink, which is arguably caused by the development and enforcement of group norms. Daniel Feldman (1984, p.47) states that ‘group norms are the informal rules that groups adopt to regulate and regularise group members’ behaviour’ (Hackman, 1976 in Feldman 1984 p.47). When this happens it is possible and sometimes likely that bad or irrational decisions will be made. This is Janis’ groupthink, ‘a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action’ (Janis 1977 p.?). This is like peer group pressure stopping people in a group from arguing that drinking too much the night before an exam is a bad idea or that arriving drunk to a lecture will not be funny.
Feldman’s
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