how to avoid groupthink
even in highly cohesive groups there are steps that can be taken to lessen the impact of groupthink on collective decision making groupthink arises out of a natural pressure for conformity so the problem can be alleviated by assigning one member to act as a devil s advocate intentionally raising every possible objection since this is an assigned role the devil s advocate need not worry about the perception of being opposed to the group group members may avoid speaking out to avoid contracting the group s leadership to avoid that problem leaders should step back from early discussions to allow lower ranked members to air their views first after discussion leaders should consider holding a second chance discussion for any objections that were not raised before 4example of groupthinkafter the space shuttle challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on the morning of jan 28 1986 investigators discovered that a series of poor decisions led to the deaths of seven astronauts the day before the launch engineers from morton thiokol the company that built the solid rocket boosters had warned flight managers at nasa that the o ring seals on the booster rockets would fail in the freezing temperatures forecast for that morning the o rings were not designed for anything below 53 degrees fahrenheit nasa personnel overrode the scientific facts presented by the engineers who were experts in their fields and fell victim to groupthink when flight readiness reviewers received the go ahead for launch from lower level nasa managers no mention was made of morton thiokol s objections the shuttle launched as scheduled but the result was disastrous 5other events that may be possible groupthink involved failures include the bay of pigs invasion watergate and the escalation of the vietnam war 6