Understanding Groupthink from a Self-Regulatory Perspective

In the years since Janis first identified the group pathology he termed groupthink, researchers have attempted to discover why groupthink occurs and what can be done to prevent it. Although most researchers have worked within Janis’s original framework, the finding of McCauley that there seems to be two different social influence processes at work indicates that there may be a more complicated process at work. This article uses a self-regulatory model of motivation as a unifying framework to show how differing initial motivations on the part of group members combined with other antecedent factors can result in various processes that lead to groupthink. Based on this motivational approach, interventions were suggested.