Groupthink or Deadlock: When Do Leaders Learn from Their Advisors?

5. Groupthink

CHAPTER 5 Groupthink Warnings against the dangers of groupthink are standard fare in schools of business and government. Excessive concurrence -seeking in policy-making groups has been offered as the chief explanation for poor decision making culminating in disasters ranging from Pearl Harbor and Watergate to the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle mission.1 By one estimate, social scientists now cite Irving Janis’s classic work on groupthink in an average of over a hundred publications a year.2 Groupthink is undoubtedly the most popular theory of how group decision making breaks down and has come to be regarded somewhat uncritically as the prime suspect in a variety of policy-making fiascoes. Despite its popularity, however, social scientists routinely complain that groupthink is a poorly specified and largely untested theory.3 Janis’s original formulation knits together aspects of group structure such as cohesion and homogeneity with situational factors producing stress or low self-esteem and other variables such as the effects of leadership and group norms. This complex of antecedent conditions for groupthink will generate, he predicts, an equally varied set of negative consequences, including shared (within the group) feelings of invulnerability and selfrighteousness , stereotyping of outgroups, self-censorship, and pressure on internal dissenters. Given such a jumble of causes and effects, it is little wonder that efforts to test Janis’s argument have often been stymied. Most of these efforts, in fact, have 97 amounted to little more than the appropriation of Janis’s terminology to retell already well-known stories of poor decision making. In such cases, it is relatively easy to find evidence of many of the phenomena Janis discusses, but doing so contributes little to an understanding of the preconditions and consequences of groupthink.4 Experimental studies might seem to hold more promise . The few that have been attempted, however, suffer heavily from the difficulties inherent in reproducing true leadership, group cohesiveness, and situational stress in a laboratory.5 This chapter will examine only two cases, both drawn from the Eisenhower administration, and thus certainly cannot afford to make any grand pronouncements about testing Janis’s theory of groupthink. It sets for itself the more limited task of considering only the effects of a mismatch between an open leader (Eisenhower ) and a closed group. Yet the predicted result—a deteriorating ability to learn—is central to groupthink, which Janis originally defined as a failure “to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”6 As in chapter 4, this chapter pays special attention to occasions when Eisenhower received critical advice intended to encourage him to reconsider his administration’s existing policies . Specifically, at least some administration insiders believed that Eisenhower’s inaction on the mounting balance of payments problem and his refusal to publicly condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy would bring, respectively, disastrous economic and political consequences. Unlike the cases discussed in chapter 4, however, the groups responsible for advising Eisenhower on these problems became more closed over time. These changes create quasi-experimental opportunities to move beyond mere storytelling and to use historical evidence to explore the causes of at least one specific form of groupthink. By stating the expected consequences of a more closed advisory system in advance, it is possible to test a specific causal chain within the bewildering array of assertions Janis and others have made about groupthink. These cases hold many of the variables Janis discusses constant. As Eisenhower’s advisors on these matters become fewer and more homogeneous, other things being equal, we should expect the president to show less and less evidence of considering alternative policies. Unlike Reagan, who might learn and even change policies dramatically in such circumstances , Eisenhower did not critically assess or reconsider 98 Groupthink policies when his circle of advisors became closed. The result was groupthink. BALANCE OF PAYMENTS DEFICITS The early years of the Eisenhower presidency were a time of economic prosperity. They were the age of the “organization man” in the gray flannel suit; of growing tracts of middle-class suburban homes with television sets, refrigerators and washing machines; and of consumer spending fueled by the growing use of credit cards.7 Moreover, the organizations filled with these gray-suited worker-consumers enjoyed the benefits of an expanding economy. The first half of the 1950s saw constant economic growth at a rate approaching 5%. Unemployment dropped from over 10% in 1947 to below 5%, and net disposable weekly earnings rose from $48.24...