No One Cried For Help: The Integration of Groupthink into Modern Rape Culture

Rape symbolizes lost innocence. Many young females increasingly endure sexual violence at the hands of multiple male assailants. Despite the common coupling of group dynamics and rapes, little evidence proposes Irving Janis’s theory of groupthink as one plausible explanation. This paper argues that the two concepts are related; groupthink needs to hold a more prominent position within the sexual violence literature. A case in the small town of Steubenville, Ohio provides the backdrop for investigating how groupthink impacts instances of gang rapes. Integration of the scholarly literature available on groupthink and sexual violence establishes the basis of this research. Janis’s groupthink model implements symptoms and features as criteria for distinguishing what constitutes an unhealthy group interaction. Steubenville reveals the presence of several such components, therefore reinforcing the assertion that groupthink does influence the interaction among members of a gang rape. New knowledge in this area of study encourages the development of preventative programs that help prevent this type of group activity from forming. Such improvements may aid in decreasing the prevalence of these gang rapes

Do You Think Your Group Thinks?

“Do You Think Your Group Thinks?” An Examination of the Relationship between Groupthink and Small Group Type The intent of our research was to analyize the six main groups in our culture and to determine which group, if any, suffers from groupthink more than the others. Groupthink is defined as “a strong concurrence-seeking tendency among members within a group that leads to a deterioration in the decision making process.” There are six main types of groups, primary groups, social groups, educational/theraputic groups, decision making/problem solving groups, work groups and mediated communication groups. A literature review was conducted on previous studies about various aspects of small group and groupthink research. In 1972, Irving L. Janis studied political disasters and developed “groupthink theory”. Eight symptoms were developed to assess group think. We determined that surveys were the best, and most efficient way to calculate these queries. Entitled, “Group Interaction Survey” our group composed a survey which consists of twelve close-ended (yes or no) questions. Each question was designed to detect one of the eight symptoms of groupthink Janis outlined. The purpose of asking these surveys was to gauge what groups are more susceptible to groupthink. Twenty surveys were passed out to each group totalling 120 surveys. According to our research, determined by the survey, primary groups had the highest amount of groupthink. Of the people we surveyed 55% of the answers indicated group think. Problem solving groups had the lowest amount of accumulated groupthink with an outcome of only 40% of the answers indicating groupthink. There are other ways the study could have been conducted, several other factors that could have been considered such as a wider variety of ages, greater number of surveys, or wider geographical area covered. Other methods could have been used as well to evaluate each individaul symptom

Rational Groupthink

We study how long-lived rational agents learn from repeatedly observing a private signal and each others' actions. With normal signals, a group of any size learns more slowly than just four agents who directly observe each others' private signals in each period. Similar results apply to general signal structures. We identify rational groupthink---in which agents ignore their private signals and choose the same action for long periods of time---as the cause of this failure of information aggregation

It Could Not Be Seen Because It Could Not Be Believed on June 30, 2013

Nineteen Prescott Fire Department, Granite Mountain Hot Shot (GMHS) wildland firefighters (WF) perished in Arizona in June 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire, an inexplicable wildland fire disaster. In complex wildland fires, sudden, dynamic changes in human factors and fire conditions can occur, thus mistakes can be unfortunately fatal. Individual and organizational faults regarding the predictable, puzzling, human failures that will result in future WF deaths are addressed. The GMHS were individually, then collectively fixated with abandoning their Safety Zone to reengage, committing themselves at the worst possible time, to relocate to another Safety Zone - a form of collective tunnel vision. Our goal is to provoke meaningful discussion toward improved wildland firefighter safety with practical solutions derived from a long-established wildland firefighter expertise/performance in a fatality-prone profession. Wildfire fatalities are unavoidable, hence these proposals, applied to ongoing training, can significantly contribute to other well-thought-out and validated measures to reduce them

Epic Human Failure on June 30, 2013

Nineteen Prescott Fire Department, Granite Mountain Hot Shot (GMHS) wildland firefighters and supervisors (WFF), perished on the June 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire (YHF) in Arizona. The firefighters left their Safety Zone during forecast, outflow winds, triggering explosive fire behavior in drought-stressed chaparral. Why would an experienced WFF Crew, leave ‘good black’ and travel downslope through a brush-filled chimney, contrary to their training and experience? An organized Serious Accident Investigation Team (SAIT) found, “… no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol.” Despite this, many WFF professionals deemed the catastrophe, “… the final, fatal link, in a long chain of bad decisions with good outcomes.” This paper is a theoretical and realistic examination of plausible, faulty, human decisions with prior good outcomes; internal and external impacts, influencing the GMHS; and two explanations for this catastrophe: Individual Blame Logic and Organizational Function Logic, and proposed preventive mitigations

The Leader as Moral Agent: Praise, Blame, and the Artificial Person

The leader as the moral agent can be both a singular and a collective entity. Regardless, that individual or group of individuals must establish and live by a moral paradigm where self-respect and respect for co-workers is paramount. In essence, the moral agent must lead by example. And it is not simply sufficient to choose the correct pathway but to care about choosing the correct pathway, stripping the decision-making process of disingenuous or superficial motives and injecting heart, concern, and passion for doing what is right

Why Catastrophic Organizational Failures Happen

Excerpt from the introduction: The purpose of this chapter is to examine the major streams of research about catastrophic failures, describing what we have learned about why these failures occur as well as how they can be prevented. The chapter begins by describing the most prominent sociological school of thought with regard to catastrophic failures, namely normal accident theory. That body of thought examines the structure of organizational systems that are most susceptible to catastrophic failures. Then, we turn to several behavioral perspectives on catastrophic failures, assessing a stream of research that has attempted to understand the cognitive, group and organizational processes that develop and unfold over time, leading ultimately to a catastrophic failure. For an understanding of how to prevent such failures, we then assess the literature on high reliability organizations (HRO). These scholars have examined why some complex organizations operating in extremely hazardous conditions manage to remain nearly error free. The chapter closes by assessing how scholars are trying to extend the HRO literature to develop more extensive prescriptions for managers trying to avoid catastrophic failures

Ben Bernanke and the Zero Bound

From 2000 to 2003, when Ben Bernanke was a professor and then a Fed Governor, he wrote extensively about monetary policy at the zero bound on interest rates. He advocated aggressive stimulus policies, such as a money-financed tax cut and an inflation target of 3-4%. Yet, since U.S. interest rates hit zero in 2008, the Fed under Chairman Bernanke has taken more cautious actions. This paper asks when and why Bernanke changed his mind about zero-bound policy. The answer, at one level, is that he was influenced by analysis from the Fed staff that was presented at the FOMC meeting of June 2003. This answer raises another question: why did the staff's views influence Bernanke so strongly? I seek answers to this question in the social psychology literature on group decision-making.