Avoiding the Destructive Seduction of Groupthink
By now if you’ve read anything I’ve shared you probably know that living with intention is something I believe to be critically important.
We are far too capable and our lives far too important to simply go with the flow.
I think it’s important for each of us to make rational, values-driven decisions about how we live our lives.
But it’s not always so easy.
So today I wanna explore three different ideas:
The sensible allure of group think
The unexpected (and dangerous) ways it shows up
An appeal to truly independent (and rational) thought
I want to preface all this by saying this exploration will be largely philosophical with some helpful anecdotes. I don’t have answers, just ideas…but I think it’s a great starting point and believe the conversation is too important to avoid.
The sensible allure of groupthink
The number of perceived inputs that flood our brains moment by moment is absolutely staggering.
There’s a reason that the reticular activating system makes it seem like our brain is playing tricks on us and “manifesting” reality.
When I bought my Tesla a few years back, more Teslas didn’t simply appear on the road. I just stopped unconsciously ignoring them.
That was my brain using a shortcut to prevent sheer and otter overwhelmed.
Our affiliation with groups creates the opportunity for another such shortcut in our brain.
This is especially true when it comes to politics and religion.
Whether through our own personal beliefs, or through the influence of our parents and others, we align ourselves with a religion or a political party.
Then our mental shortcuts (or simple laziness) has us go with the flow of that affiliation. It’s a lot easier to toe the party (or religious) line on a complex issue than to attempt to fully understand it and truly form your own rational opinion. Why?
You affiliated yourself with the group. You have a level of shared trust with the group. So it’s not a hard leap to simply follow the group.
In the history of civilization, that’s never gone wrong, right?
The unexpected (and dangerous) ways it shows up
The “enlightened” alternative to groupthink is often contrarian thinking.
The irony is that it often carries no greater level of rational, values-driven thought…contrarian ideas just becomes a new mindless default.
This is where politics get real gross.
We take a stand not by cheering for “our side” to win, but by cheering for our “opponents” to lose at all costs.
And in case you’re wondering, I’m not even talking about the idea of voting for the “lesser of two evils” in an election. That’s far too sane and simple of an example for what I’m talking about.
This version is where a policy credited to President Biden is egregious, wasteful, and disgusting, but the exact same policy credited to President Trump is beautiful, successful, and American.
This version is the world where substance doesn’t matter, affiliation does.
This version is where you don’t actually believe in anything, you just believe against the norm.
And by simply inverting the status quo and calling it contrarian people are applying the same level of mindless groupthink and simply putting it in different clothes.
An appeal to truly independent (and rational) thought
Here’s an interesting conundrum of human existence. Two of the most powerful drivers of our decision making process are…
An ego that HATES being wrong
Feeling a need to have (and share) an opinion about everything
So when we’re trying to make independent and rational decisions, that’s what we’re up against. And that’s why none of this is easy.
I’ll give you an example of where I caught myself recently using a metaphor.
Imagine your friend was about to invest their life savings with Bernie Madoff. You warn him about it, you tell him it’s a scam, you plead your case about how he’s going to lose his money, but he does it anyway.
Thankfully he sells out of the investment a few months later unscathed and actually makes out with a profit.
Would it make sense to have secretly hoped he’d lose his money so he’d learn his lesson that you were right? Or to be angry when he came out unscathed? That’d be a little questionable.
My example isn’t about investments, it’s about bombing Iran and the ceasefire that came next.
The fact that we’ve seen a ceasefire hold for the past week, regardless of my dislike for our involvement, is unquestionably a good thing. But for a moment my ego screamed “I was right! I just want to be able to say I told you so! This outcome just reinforces bad behavior!”
Groupthink is irrational and has us act by association.
Contrarian thinking is similar but has us act by disassociation.
Independent thinking is rational and has us act (or not act) based on beliefs and values.
It’s not easy.
It requires us to slow down, to tame the ego, and to be willing to take a step back when everyone wants to fan a flame of some sort.
It sometimes requires us to admit we were wrong, or realize things are a little more gray than they are black and white.
It may mean separating the baby from the bathwater (highly recommend this as a parent).
But each time we do that and we make decisions based on core values and not simply based on association or disassociation, we become a little more authentic.
One decision at a time.
And when enough people make enough little decisions, big things happen.
What do you think?
