Groupthink is a form of unity in reasoning mostly evident in politics whereby numerous decisions by politicians in our respective states in most occasions people opt to embrace based in their affiliations. Thinking as a group always exhausts all thinkable possibilities in regards to a particular situation (Ormrod, 2013). Such decisions are often graded by their adverse effects on human beings. An evident example is the debate that the US congress had about lodging an air strike against a group of terrorists in Iraq. Section of the congress were holding onto the argument that by lodging an air strike on Iraq, most of the civilians will lose their lives which will then taint the name of the US military for attacking innocent civilians.
We can do it today.
The initial stage of this thought of retaliation came after the Iraqian terrorists caused a great harm to the US citizens through their radical activities. This called for accurate vengeance plan that would curb the terrorism effect once and for all. In the formation of the retribution plan, the US government had to deliberate on this matter among its lawmakers and arrive at the best decision that would be agreed upon by all stakeholders (Shiraev,Shiraev, & Levy, 2016).
Citing evidence from this event, it relays the effect of group thinking on handling situations. Despite them agreeing on carrying out an airstrike on regions that were inhabited by terrorist, they ended up killing many civilians. From this concept, one can observe the negative effect of group thinking as it might sometimes reach a decision that causes harm to the innocent (Wegerif et al., 2017).
The only way of avoiding the ideology of group thinking is by acting on one’s discretion that will bring out desirable results. A person who does not have any pressure inside or outside force in making decision always comes up with a feasible decision that would count after the actual implementation practice of the decision. The conclusion on airstrikes by the US congress was affected by outward pressure that was emanating from the pain of losing many American on terrorists acts done by Iraq nationals.
- Ormrod, J. E. (2013). Educational psychology: Pearson new international edition: Developing learners. Pearson Higher Ed.
- Shiraev, E. B., Shiraev, E. B., & Levy, D. A. (2016). Cross-cultural psychology: Critical thinking and contemporary applications. Taylor & Francis.
- Wegerif, R., Fujita, T., Doney, J., Linares, J. P., Richards, A., & Van Rhyn, C. (2017). Developing and trialing a measure of group thinking. Learning and Instruction, 48, 40-50.