Saturday, February 21, 2009
Groupthink
In this entry, we shall take a look at an example of the Groupthink that played a part in the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. For those who might be unaware, this tragedy involved the disintegration of NASA's space shuttle, Challenger, over the Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds into its flight. This resulted in the deaths of the seven crew members and the incident was made all the more significant due to the presence of a teacher, Christa McAuliffe, amongst the crew as the first member of the 'Teacher in Space Project'.
In order to spare readers all the technical jargon involved in the breaking apart of the Challenger, I will just list the fundamental cause: Failure of an O-Ring seal in a rocket booster to function during the "burn stage", resulting in rocket fuel being leaked. This can be literally portrayed as "Adding fuel to the fire". To further highlight the importance of the O-Ring, it is classified as a "Criticality 1" component, which means that a failure on its part, without a backup, would result in a loss of life or vehicle. A contributing factor to its failure is the O-Ring having been untested in freezing conditions similar to the one predicted on the day of the launch.
What is Groupthink ?
Irving Janis, Yale Social Psychologist, defines it as "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action".
Symptoms of Groupthink
It is possible to gain a rough insight as to how Groupthink played a role in this disaster by reading the next few points without having read about the incident. (NASA managers were thought to have compromised safety regulations in order to maintain the launch manifest)
Illusion of Invulnerability: When concerns were raised by engineers regarding the effect of temperature on the resilience of the O-Rings, NASA management dismissed it by claiming the risk was true for every flight, and that in the event that the primary ring failed, the secondary would still seal. This was an unfounded claim and defies the rule of a Criticality 1 component.
Belief in the group's own morality: NASA management were felt to have had shifted their moral rules, influencing engineers and their contractors to prove that that conditions were unsafe for launch rather than showing that it was safe.
Shared Stereotypes: The concerns regarding the O-Rings were raised by engineers at Morton Thiokol, the contractor responsible for the construction and maintenance of the shuttle's rocket boosters. As such, there may have been a hint of "Us versus Them" mentality used by the NASA management.
Collective Rationalizations: No one in the NASA management opposed the statement by NASA manager, Geory Hardy, that the secondary O-Ring was being counted upon to seal under the worst case conditions. The secondary O-Ring was there to provide redundancy in case of unforeseen failure, not to replace the primary O-Ring and leaving no backup.
Self Censorship: Thiokol engineers were hesitant to voice out their outright disapproval of the launch.
Illusion of Unanimity: NASA managers did not voice out hesitancy regarding the launch to their superiors
Pressure on Dissenters: Thiokol Engineers were pressured both by NASA management as well as their own. This was due to the fear of public regarding the agency as inept due to having already postphoned the launch several times for the former, and fear of losing NASA contracts for the latter.
Mind-Guards: Jesse Moore, top of the flight readiness review chain, was insulated from the negative concerns regarding the O-Rings. Thiokkol's expert on the O-Rings, Roger Boisjoly, was not asked to give input in the final decisions charts.
As we can see, a groupthink atmosphere tends to lead to negative consequences by disrupting problem solving, having members ignore alternatives, failure to test ideas against reality and refusal to make contingency plans. With the inclination towards groupwork in modern society, how do you think that groupthink can manifest itself in everyday life ?
5 comments:
People died through groupthink?!??!
And i thought only conflict will bring about death.
Didnt NASA have an independent panel of safety engineers to check on these matters? They are after all paid fat salaries to oversee faults such as these. Its kinda their job..
Hey ben,
this news is a sad one. I kinda of understand your applications are deviating to how the crew members think and communicate brought out by their actions.
In your application column there are many disagreement in the firm that lead to breakdown of communication.
I believe there are some companies out in S'pore are facing Groupthink in their meetings. Haha. All the more they should appoint someone as a devil's advocate to keep on track. Perhaps, that's how exterbal and internal auditing comes about.
-Cheers Waine-: Hear from You in my blog!
Just suggesting an edit you may wish to make to your entry, I believe the Challenger should be called a space shuttle instead of a space shuttler. :)
Groupthink has manifested itself in everyday life in more ways than one would have thought. For instance, an individual, let's call him Merlin, decides to go to a particular Junior College based on his own preferences and based on the reputation of the Junior College concerned. Another individual, let's call him Reuben, is also deciding on which Junior College to attend. Groupthink happens here when Reuben chooses to go to the same Junior College as Merlin despite living twice the distance away from the Junior College as Merlin because he regards the choice made by Merlin to be the best and that cannot be disputed. This is even though Reuben lives just across the road from another Junior College. This groupthink no doubt has a disasterous effect on the academic performance of Reuben who has to spend lots of time commuting to and from school daily. The simplicity of the above example is able to show the disasterous effects of making a decision based on the decisions that others make, though on a very minute scale.
While I have absolutely no intention whatsoever in making the following commentary of mine sound too political but the groupthink mentality in my opinion has already manifested itself in Governmental affairs as well, assuming that your definition of everyday life affairs also includes those pertaining to the Government. I do not believe that groupthink didn't come into play when generally almost every policy that is passed in parliament goes unopposed. What are the chances of everyone thinking the same way? The activity, or lack thereof, of the debates in our parliaments goes to show how groupthink obviously exists.
Farhan> I think they did have safety engineers on their part. However, since the malfunctioning system in particular was manufactured by a contracted company with specialized engineers in that field, that wasn't much power to veto against them IMO. (Since the thumbs up was given by higher management)
Waine > There probably are, but I'm not too familiar with the local scene, haha.
Melvin > That's a valid example brought up, though whether it is a result of groupthink or the votes of majority, I'm not sure either. I think you're better read in that field, so I'll take your word for it =p
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