Page 566 - Understanding Psychology

Figure 19.6 The Challenger Explosion
The decision to launch the Challenger U.S. space shuttle in below-freezing weather in January 1986 was the result of groupthink. Managers ignored the engineers’ warnings about the dangers of launching. In full view of people on the ground and millions more on television, the space shuttle exploded just after its launch. How can groups prevent groupthink?
sociogram: a diagram that represents relationships within a group, especially likes and dislikes of members for
other members
sought to please the president and present a unified front. Several hundred members of the invading force at the Bay of Pigs lost their lives as a result of the decision.
How to Improve Group Decision Making Groups can avoid bad decision making and improve the quality of their deci- sions. Leaders should avoid strongly advocating their own views and, instead, encourage group discussion. During dis- cussion, group members should hear all viewpoints and challenge one another’s views. Minority viewpoints should be expressed and discussed. Also, group members should focus on the task—the issue to be discussed or the problem to be resolved. Group members should not focus on group unity when making decisions; however, they should focus on keeping the lines of communication open and gathering enough information to make an unbiased decision.
Communication Patterns
When studying groups, social psychologists use a tech- nique called the sociogram to analyze group structure. All members of a group are asked to name those people with whom they would like to interact, those they like best, and those with whom they’d rather not work. For example, the members may be asked with whom they would like to go to a party, to discuss politics, to spend a vacation, or to complete a task. Their choices can then be diagrammed, as shown in Figure 19.7. Sociograms can help psychologists predict how that individual is likely to communicate with
other group members. Another way to discover the structure of a group is to examine the communication patterns in the group—who says what to whom and how often.
An experiment on communication patterns in problem solving was conducted by Harold Leavitt in 1951. He gave a card with several sym- bols on it to each person in a group of five and put each person in a sep- arate room or booth. By allowing group members to communicate only by written messages in a certain configuration, he was able to create the networks shown in Figure 19.8. Each circle represents a person, and the lines represent open channels. Participants placed in each position could exchange messages only with the person to whom they were connected by channels.
The people who were organized into a “circle” were the slowest at solv- ing the problem presented on the cards but the happiest at doing it. In this group everyone sent and received a large number of messages until some- one solved the problem and passed the information on. In the “wheel,” by contrast, everyone sent a few messages to one central person, who solved the puzzle and told the rest. These groups found the answer quickly, but the people on the outside of the wheel did not enjoy the job.
Following the experiment, the members in each group were asked to identify the leader of their group. In the centralized groups (wheel, Y, and chain), the person in the center was usually chosen as the group leader.
552 Chapter 19 / Group Interaction