Organisational Psychology PDF

# Organisational Psychology ## Study Tip - Many of the theories use self-reports to measure leadership and followership - Learn the different types of self-reports, such as structured or unstructured, and the strengths and weaknesses of each of them. - Think about reliability and validity as well a...

# Organisational Psychology ## Study Tip - Many of the theories use self-reports to measure leadership and followership - Learn the different types of self-reports, such as structured or unstructured, and the strengths and weaknesses of each of them. - Think about reliability and validity as well as cultural differences and generalisability. ## Test Yourself 1. **Jamil's friend at work has been studying about followership behaviour and has said that Jamil uses a pragmatic survivor style.** a. Suggest characteristics that Jamil may be showing that led to his friend's suggestion. b. Explain the relationship between the style you have mentioned in (a) and levels of performance in the workplace. 2. **Outline what is meant by generalisability, using an example from followership styles.** a. Explain one similarity between two followership styles, as discussed by Kelley (1988). 3. **Describe what psychologists have discovered about followership styles.** a. Evaluate what psychologist have discovered about followership styles, with a discussion about usefulness. 4. Outline the dimensions which informed Kelley's five styles of leadership. 5. Suggest why Kelley's theory is more on the individual side of the individual vs situational debate. 6. Explain two strengths of Kelley's study on followership styles. ## Key Terms - forming - storming - norming - performing - adjourning - triangulation - dynamic ## Methodology Generalisations from findings ## 9.3 Group Behaviour in Organisations ### 9.3.1 Group Development and Decision-Making **Think!** What are the five stages of group development as suggested by Tuckman and Jensen (2010)? **Think!** Janet's workplace has just won a big contract to supply a major company with uniforms. This is the biggest contract that they have ever won and Janet knows that she needs to form a team to try and work out how to complete the order. The team comprises three other people and Janet has tried to include a mix of people with different skills and ideas: - Thomas knows everything about making uniforms and meeting deadlines. Sometimes Janet thinks he has read every book about it and he is the person everyone goes to for information. - Gulika is quiet but has fantastic attention to detail. She can see every error and can ensure all goods are of high quality. - Simon keeps everyone together. If anyone is unhappy, they go to Simon and he will listen and suggest a solution. Which team roles are each of the members displaying according to Belbin? What are the weaknesses of each of the roles? **Think!** Take a look at the two theories on these pages; would you categorise them as situational or individual explanations? Or a mix of both? ## 9.3 Group Behaviour in Organisations Look at Figure 9.14. What stage of Tuckman and Jensen's group development do you think they are at? And why? Think of a time you were in a group at school or at work. Do you believe you went through the five stages Tuckman and Jensen discussed? Are there any problems you can see with trying to use linear models which suggest you move from one stage to another? **Figure 9.14** ## Tuckman and Jensen's (2010) Stages of Group Development For teams to be effective in the workplace, they need to work together collaboratively. This does not happen automatically and for a while the group is unsure how to function as a team and how to achieve their goal. Tuckman (1965) reviewed 55 different articles that studied small group development. From these articles he tried to find specific concepts which were common during the development of groups. The concepts discovered formed the basis of his original model which included four developmental stages: 1. **Forming**: Group members get to know each other and try to see which behaviours will and will not be acceptable to the group. This is a period of uncertainty and people look for guidance. A member who asserts authority may be seen as a potential leader. Team members will question what the team offers them and what they are expected to do. They also worry about fitting in. 2. **Storming**: This is the most critical stage of group development. This stage is often characterised by high levels of conflict as individual personalities start to emerge. Performance may decrease as members focus on areas where they do not agree, rather than moving forward. This is a time when subgroups may form, usually led by the strongest personalities. To get through this stage, members need to 'storm' through conflicting ideas by using questioning and by challenging ideas; this will lead to higher levels of creativity. If they do not, resentment may follow. 3. **Norming**: Most conflict is resolved and the group is unified in its approach to the goal. During this stage, leaders are confirmed and members' roles allocated. However, some groups get to this stage without going through the storming stage which may lead to differences not being resolved. The danger of this stage is that dominant members may take over and quieter members become reluctant to challenge ideas. 'Groupthink' can happen, where the desire for unity means irrational decisions may be made. 4. **Performing**: Cooperation has been well established, the team has matured and is organised. What was once a set of individuals is now functioning as a team. Goals and roles are agreed on, conflicts are dealt with as and when they arise and the group is proud of their team's success. Creativity and innovation are major parts of this stage. Tuckman and Jensen (2010) revisited the model a few years later and looked at 22 review articles which attempted to study Tuckman's original four stages. Tuckman acknowledged that the four-stage model was based on small-scale research and therefore wanted to see if further studies had been completed. Although many of the studies supported a vast majority of Tuckman's stages, only one (Runkel, 1971) set out specifically to empirically test his model. Runkel's research mainly supported the four stages, although the methodology used was prone to observer bias. Two studies and a review did identify termination as a final stage, with the 'death' of the group important especially with the connections made between members. For this reason, Tuckman and Jensen added a fifth stage: 5. **Adjourning**: Most of the team's goals have been accomplished and final tasks are being completed and results documented. As work lessens, members may be assigned to other groups and the group moves apart. This may cause regret, so some formal 'ceremony' may happen or new members may move in and the process restarts. ## Evaluating Tuckman and Jensen (2010) One strength of Tuckman and Jensen's (2010) model is that it is a dynamic model which has changed based upon increased theoretical knowledge. For example, a fifth stage was added due to the review of 22 articles which looked at Tuckman's original four-stage model. The ability to change the model due to more recent information and evidence increases the validity of the theory. However, there may still be a question about whether splitting group behaviour into distinct linear stages is realistic as often stages may overlap and be revisited; this will question the validity of the model. One weakness of Tuckman and Jensen's (2010) five-stage model is that it lacks empirical evidence and therefore reliability of the theory is still largely untested. Tuckman himself admitted that more empirical research needed to be done. Indeed, the amended version was based on mainly theoretical articles rather than studies. However, 22 articles were reviewed by Tuckman and Jansen with the vast majority broadly supporting Tuckman's model, especially with the fifth stage amended, suggesting that reliability may be high. ## Belbin's Nine Team Roles In the 1970s, Meredith Belbin began to observe teams in order to study group dynamics. Individuals would also complete a number of psychometric tests so that personality and behaviour could be included. As research progressed, he realised that behaviour was more important than factors such as intelligence, with nine team roles identified. 1. **Plants**: These are inventors and innovators. They prefer to operate by themselves or at some distance to other team members, using their imagination and different working methods. Their function is often to challenge standard working practices and to solve complex problems. Too many plants may not help, however, as they focus on their own ideas and not those of the group. 2. **Resource investigators**: Enthusiastic extroverts. They are natural communicators and negotiators and are good at developing new contracts. Good at picking up other people's ideas and promoting them, they have a warm outgoing nature and are generally relaxed. However, their enthusiasm can fade quickly. 3. **Co-ordinators**: Help others to work towards shared goals. Trusting and confident, they are quick to spot individual talents and use them to pursue shared objectives. They function well in charge of a diverse team and perform better with colleagues of near equal rank. However, they may manipulate others to achieve their own objectives. 4. **Shapers**: Highly goal orientated and have great drive and energy; overcoming obstacles through determination. Shapers are competitive and like to win. They often get promoted as they impress people with their decisive leadership style. Performing well when quick and decisive action is needed, they can also be argumentative and aggressive. 5. **Monitor evaluators**: Serious-minded and can be seen as over-enthusiastic. They are slow in making decisions, preferring to carefully think things over. With their high critical thinking ability, they are unlikely to make reckless mistakes, as they deal in facts and logic and not in emotion. They are good at weighing up pros and cons of a decision but can be seen as being overly critical, slow and boring. 6. **Implementers**: Practical and possess self-control and discipline. They work hard and are regarded as not being interested in their own personal agendas. Seen as reliable and successful, because they are efficient and do what needs to be done in a systematic way. However, they are rigid and may not accept new ways of doing things. 7. **Teamworkers**: Sociable and generally supportive and concerned about others. They are flexible and adapt to different situations. They are diplomatic and caring and good listeners and so are popular with colleagues who feel unappreciated. They are missed when they are not around. They want to avoid conflict, so can be indecisive when faced with difficult decisions. 8. **Completer finishers**: Great attention to detail, strive for perfection and correct errors. Quite introverted but are trusted to do work of the highest standard and complete it on time. Perfect when tasks need accuracy and will demand the same high standards from others. However, this often creates anxiety, and they may be reluctant to trust others to do work. 9. **Specialists**: See learning and furthering their knowledge as their reason to exist. Specialists will be seen as experts and people will turn to them for help and guidance. Although not viewed as natural team players, they can be used as a source of research, and should command respect due to their in-depth knowledge. They do not like social discussions and can be stubborn when challenged about the validity of their knowledge. Belbin constructed the Belbin Self Perception Inventory to measure individual team roles; his questionnaire is based on individual responses to forced-choice statements about behaviours. Alongside this, observer statements are used with six other people making statements about the individual. These are not fixed choices and the six responses are correlated to measure validity of the inventory. ## Evaluating Belbin's Nine Team Roles ### Issues and Debates - **Idiographic versus Nomothetic:** - The strength of Belbin's theory is it takes a nomothetic, scientific approach using reliable and valid methods. Belbin used observation and psychometric tests to construct the model and used the Belbin Self Perception Inventory to measure team roles. - These are quantitative methods which produce objective and reliable data. They also use observer statements to check the validity of the results. - However, the use of self-reports can be seen as a weakness as they are subject to social desirability bias and forced- choice answers may not reflect actions in real life, and do not allow for responders to give reasons for their answers. - The observer reports also may be affected by external conflicts and situational variables, reducing their validity. - **Cultural Differences:** - One weakness is that Belbin's theory may not apply to all team roles in all cultures. - The different team roles are based upon a Western idea of team roles and although Belbin believed they should apply to all teams, some of them may not apply to cultures which are more collectivist and rely more on collective action and team working. This means that the findings of Belbin's theory and inventory may not be generalised to all cultures and so the theory has limited application. ## Learning Link: Belbin used observations to construct his theory, and also used self-reports alongside the observations to measure an individual's team roles. Which studies at AS Level also use observations as their methodology? Do any of the same strengths and weaknesses apply here or not? Did any studies use observations alongside other methods to obtain results? What is the strength of using **triangulation** (using a number of methods together)? ## Study Tip: A version of the Belbin Self Perception Inventory is available online. The results themselves are not important but completing it may improve your understanding about the strengths and weaknesses of such methods. As you are doing this, try and think of the problems people may encounter in using it. Think of cultural differences and how that makes it more difficult to use. Think about how the statements are constructed and how you score yourself on them. Also think about observers having to write down information about you as a person to see whether they agree with you. How does this make you feel? All of these issues are important in terms of evaluation, not only of this test specifically but also of self-reports in general. ## Zander wants to identify his team role at work. He asks Sunil whether he knows of any way he could find out. a. Suggest one way Zander can identify his team role at work. b. Explain one weakness of the measurement you have suggested in (a). c. Suggest two characteristics of teamworkers as detailed in Belbin's nine team roles. ## Describe what psychologists have found out about group formation and decision making. a. Evaluate what psychologists have found out about group formation and decision making, including a discussion on validity. ## Carrie-Ann wants to find out whether teams actually go through Tuckman and Jensen's five stages of group development. a. Plan an observation to investigate whether groups go through Tuckman's five stages of group development. - Your plan must include: - details about the type of observation used. - details about the sampling method used. b. For one piece of psychological knowledge that has informed your plan: - i. Describe this psychological knowledge. - ii. Explain how two features of this knowledge have informed your plan. ## Faulty Decision-Making, Explanations and Strategies to Avoid it **Think!** Define **groupthink** . Outline one real life example of groupthink occurring. **Think!** A group of team leaders are working together to try and discover why productivity in the factory has gone down. The discussion has centred around the workforce being at fault, suggesting that they are lazy and cannot be bothered to work. A couple of group members were worried about how the workers are being portrayed and suggest it is more about how the workers are treated and the poor quality of the equipment, but every time they try to speak up members of the group suggest that they were wrong. The group has now been meeting for many weeks. The two members who expressed doubts no longer want to raise their doubts and have started to believe that the group is right. They believe that the group would never say this about workers if it was untrue. Managers are worried that the group is showing symptoms of groupthink. Do you think the manager is right? Are any of the symptoms of groupthink being demonstrated here? **Think!** Do you think that groupthink is determined more by individual or situational factors. What makes you think this? Asch's (1951) classic study (see page 132) looked at conformity and specifically how social pressure from majority influence can lead conformity to a group. Research Asch's study and suggest reasons why this study may support groupthink as a theory. Are there any issues with using Asch's study to support groupthink? **Figure 9.15** ## Groupthink: Features and Examples When critical decisions are being made, it is important to ask whether it is better to have a group making the decision or does having more than one person make it more likely that a faulty decision is made? Answering this question is difficult because you not only have to assess whether a decision is correct, but also the circumstances at the time and the information the group is working with. One possible cause of faulty decision-making is groupthink which happens due to social pressures. The term groupthink (Janis, 1971) is used to try and understand why highly competent members of a group stick with a decision or a course of action that they have made, even when it is obvious to members that it is going wrong and they know that the consequences of that decision are negative. ## Explanation Janis (1971) explained that groupthink occurs when the desire for agreement becomes so powerful that it takes over from objective appraisal of the decision being made. The development of group norms and a strong sense of social identity and cohesiveness within the group suppresses critical thinking and means that significant group pressures are put on anyone who dares to object to the decision being made. In addition, group isolation may also cause groupthink. This is where the group has no outside information to help them make a more balanced decision. Janis specified social norms and stress as two indicators of whether groupthink will occur. - **Social norms:** Although it would be expected that as the group becomes more cohesive the more a member would feel able to challenge a decision, the opposite is the case. Conformity, therefore, actually increases as cohesiveness increases due to the individual's desire not to cause any conflict. More concerning is the idea that members actually all think a proposal is a good one but have not examined it properly or looked at pros and cons. Some may have doubts but set them aside and agree with the group. - **Stress:** Janis (1971) suggested that the strong psychological pressures a group faces when they work closely together, share the same values and most importantly face a crisis situation that puts the whole group under stress, all make groupthink more likely. Golkar (2013) expanded this explanation of groupthink, agreeing that high stress is a factor and can interact with low self-esteem, which may have come about through past failures as well as recent difficulties in making decisions; this will lower self-efficacy and increase chances of groupthink. Groupthink is also more likely to occur if the decision to be made creates a moral dilemma. Janis (1971) specified eight symptoms (features) of groupthink: - **Invulnerability:** Group members have an illusion of invulnerability which leads them to being over-optimistic and taking risks. They also fail to spot warnings of danger. - **Rationale:** Ignoring warnings and other negative feedback, group members rationalise their beliefs. For example, before the Pearl Harbor attack in the Second World War, warnings were ignored about the possibility of a Japanese attack as it was rationalised that the Japanese would never dare cause an all-out war with America. - **Morality:** Members believe that their group has high morals and so this allows them to ignore the moral consequences of decisions. - **Stereotypes:** Members have stereotypical beliefs of outgroups. - **Pressure:** Members apply pressure to any individual who expresses doubts about a decision or the validity of an argument. - **Self-censorship:** Members avoid expressing any opinion that deviates from the group opinion. - **Illusion of unanimity:** This is the assumption that any member who remains silent agrees with the group. - **Mindguards:** These are people in the group who guard members from outside dissenting voices that may break the consensus and their belief in the morality of the decision taken. ## Examples 1. **The Challenger Disaster.** In 1986, NASA launched the Challenger spacecraft which exploded within 73 seconds of take-off. Groupthink has been suggested to be part of the reason it happened. For example: - **NASA managers maintained that everyone was in agreement with the launch even though Thiokol engineers had expressed doubts on and off about the temperature at the timing of the launch and said take-off should be aborted.** (Illusion of unanimity) - **These engineers suffered pressure from NASA managers to reverse their doubts as there had already been three attempts at launch. In addition, there was pressure from their own company where there were worries about losing contracts with NASA.** (Pressure) - **Experts were not even consulted to give information to Jesse Moore who made the final decision to launch, so he was protected from what was seen as troublesome ideas.** (Mindguards) - **The group had worked together for many years and was a cohesive unit; engineers were isolated from the decision-making process (group isolation) and stronger leaders from NASA pushed against the engineering group.** 2. **The Bay of Pigs (1961) invasion took place when American soldiers attempted to overthrow the Cuban Government.** President Kennedy wanted to overthrow Fidel Castro and other members of his planning group knew it, so they made decisions to please the president that were not based on objective information. They used negative stereotypes of the 'enemy' group and moved forward without any openness to new information. The result was a disaster and came close to the USA starting a war with Russia. ## Strategies to Avoid Groupthink 1. **Invite one or more outside experts or senior managers to each meeting and encourage them to challenge the ideas of the group members.** However, there is a chance that if this happens everyone will then act differently and not express views fully or be honest. 2. **At every meeting of the group, a member should play 'devil's advocate' and go against the majority view.** This person should challenge ideas and get individuals or the group to justify their decisions. However, this is only effective if the group thinks the person playing devil's advocate really believes what he says. If not, it will not be taken seriously and could be ignored which could perhaps even encourage groupthink. 3. **Senior managers at an organisation should inform group members that they are all equally responsible for the decisions being made and that they will all face the consequences of their decisions.** This may reduce the air of invulnerability some groups may feel. However, this may inhibit members from making the decision in the first place, and instead, making the 'safe' decision rather than the correct one due to fear of the consequences. 4. **Each group member should be assigned the role of critical evaluator with priority to air any doubts that they may have.** This means the group leader must be able to take and act on constructive criticism. This may lead to the decision-making process taking a long time and lead to conflicts between the group, meaning it becomes dysfunctional and cannot make a decision at all. ## Evaluating Groupthink ### Issues and Debates - **Application to Everyday Life:** - A strength of groupthink as an explanation is that it can be applied to real life. - Janis (1971) used real-life examples such as the Bay of Pigs invasion to construct her theory, and more recently it has been applied to the Iraq War and the Challenger disaster. - If it can explain real-life situations, then strategies to ensure they do not happen again can be implemented. - This will decrease the chances of negative consequences happening due to faulty group processes, increase health and safety and make the theory useful for both big and small organisations. ## Individual and Situational Explanations In addition, groupthink is a more holistic explanation of faulty decision-making as it takes into account the effects of personality, as well as the influence of the situation. Janis (1971) believed that situational aspects such as conformity, group cohesiveness, social identity and stress were important in creating groupthink, although acknowledging that a leader with a strong personality would also increase it. In addition, Golkar (2013) believed that an individual with low self-esteem and low self-efficacy would be more susceptible to groupthink, suggesting that personality factors were an issue. Therefore, the theory considers different effects of personality and different situational influences, making it a more complete theory. One weakness of groupthink theory is the lack of supporting empirical research. Aldag and Fuller (1993) noted that support for groupthink tends to come from retrospective case studies, and these are subject to bias and faulty memory. In addition, the case studies used involved political decision-making at the highest level, which is not typical of real-life organizational situations. Indeed, Fuller and Aldag (1998) continued their criticism by suggesting that groupthink has become a populist model, which is talked about in the news and social media and that every faulty decision is suggested to be groupthink despite the lack of empirical research, meaning that other factors are ignored. In addition, the case studies used to support and construct groupthink were all based upon decisions made in individualist cultures such as the USA. For example, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the decision to ignore warnings before the Pearl Harbor attack were both faulty decisions made by North American groups. It may be that the decision-making process is different in collectivist nations where the group is more important than the individual and therefore there may be different processes in play, limiting its application in those different cultures. However, the process of formation of groups may indeed be universal, and groupthink is still a popular and widely used theory across the world, meaning that the concerns about generalisability to all cultures may be misplaced. ## Learning Link: Although Milgram's studies (1963) look at obedience to authority rather than conformity, there may be an argument that groupthink may be due to a strong leader of the group, a legitimate authority figure that the group may not want to disobey in terms of the decision: the same as the suggestion with Milgram's participants. In addition, the participants in Milgram's study were willing to carry on despite doubts and potentially harming another person. This can be linked to groupthink as the group would carry on with the decision-making despite the potential negative consequences that may occur. Finally, both Milgram and, later, Janis (1971) acknowledged the importance of situational factors on behaviour. ## Study Tip: Groupthink is an interesting concept and has become a theory that is very popular in everyday life. When learning about groupthink it is important to learn all three parts: the explanations, the examples and the strategies to overcome it, as you could be asked questions on any of these parts. When learning the strategies, remember that there are reasons why they may not work. Make sure you learn these properly as well. Although two real life examples have been explained here, there are many more. Try and find some examples that are not about political leaders but look for some from different cultures or smaller businesses. If you find this hard then this may support the evaluation issues discussed on these pages. ## José has been reading about groupthink and is concerned that it may happen within his organisation, especially as a group has been set up to discuss changes to workplace practices. a. Suggest two strategies that José may put in place within his organisation to stop groupthink from happening. b. Explain one situational factor which may be a reason for groupthink occurring in an organisation. ## Describe what psychologists have discovered out about groupthink. a. Evaluate what psychologists have found out about groupthink, including a discussion about reductionism vs holism. ## Outline the role of stress in groupthink. ## Suggest how mindguards in a group setting make it more likely that groupthink will occur. ## Retrospective case studies have been used to study the idea of groupthink. a. Explain one strength and one weakness of using case studies to study groupthink. ## Forsyth's Cognitive Limitations and Errors **Think!** What is meant by sins of omission? Can you give any examples? **Think!** Parvinder's pharmaceutical company is having problems with some of their workers whom the managers believe have not been working hard enough. A group has been formed to make a decision on whether the workers need to be given a warning or not. After a week Parvinder dropped into the meeting and was concerned because the group members were arguing about a rumour about one of the workers despite being told that they had to ignore it. Also, people were constantly talking about how some of the workers just had a bad attitude, and how you can tell that they probably just don't care about others at all and have a bad personality', rather than looking at the situation they work in. What cognitive errors may the group be showing? **Think!** The two theories you have learned about are groupthink and cognitive limitations and error. Can you think of a similarity and a difference between these two theories? ## Cognitive Errors and Thumb Rules - Cognitive errors are often used to make decisions simpler and easier. - Heuristics or 'rules of thumb' exist to help us make quicker decisions - **Confirmation bias** means that individuals or groups only really seek out information that confirms their own beliefs. Can you think of any time you have experienced this? Is there any type of career where confirmation bias or the use of heuristics could actually have serious consequences? ## Confirmation Bias **Figure 9.16** When working within a group, members are often under significant cognitive demand. We often dread going into staff meetings, discussion groups or brainstorming sessions as we see them as a waste of time, where members get sidetracked talking about things that are not relevant and decision-making is a slow process. Before, during and after a meeting, group members have to consider the consequences of their actions, both as individuals and as a group. However, even though being in a group has many advantages over the individual such as more resources, more capacity to process that information and better error detection, groups still do not always make the right decisions. According to Forsyth (2006), psychologists have identified a number of biases that may distort judgement and therefore group decisions. For example, we may jump to conclusions too quickly and stick to them despite new information, or we may overestimate the accuracy of our judgements. ## Decisional Sin Forsyth (2006) in his book Group Dynamics discussed the three general categories of potential biases first identified by Kerr et al. (1992): 1. **Sins of commission:** This is where a group misses out information in some way, including when a group carries on basing their judgements or decisions on false or irrelevant information. Some examples of sins of commission are: - **Belief perseverance:** This is where information is relied on which has already been reviewed and found to be inaccurate. - **Sunk cost bias:** This is where a group is reluctant to change their course of action because they have made an investment of money or time and they do not want to lose that investment. - **Extra-evidentiary bias:** This is when information is used by an individual or group when they have been explicitly told to ignore it. - **Hindsight bias:** The tendency to overestimate the accuracy of your prior knowledge of an outcome. 2. **Sins of omission:** Failing to seek out information, overlooking useful information or not checking for errors within the information. - **Base rate bias:** Failure to pay attention to relevant information about general trends and tendencies. - **Fundamental attribution error:** Stresses dispositional (personality) causes when attributing the cause for people's behaviour and ignores situational factors. This tends to be observed in individualist cultures such as the USA and not in collectivist cultures such as Japan. 3. **Sins of imprecision:** Relying on mental rules of thumb or heuristics that oversimplify decisions or introduce errors into the decision-making process. - **Availability heuristics:** This is basing a decision just on information that is readily available. - **Conjunction bias:** Failing to recognise that the probability that two events occur together is always going to be less than only one of the events occurring. - **Representativeness heuristics:** Relying heavily on factors which seem to make sense but in the end are misleading. Groups can also show confirmation bias which is where the group, or individuals within the group, do not seek out information which may contradict their original conclusion, whilst seeking out information that will confirm it. This can be made worse when individuals within the group continue to do this but others do not, meaning that a group solution or decision cannot be reached. Kerr et al. (1992) looked at the level of confirmation bias in individuals and groups and found that the tendency for confirmation bias is even stronger in groups than it is with individuals. ## Strategies to Avoid Cognitive Errors - **Educate yourself on cognitive errors in order to understand why they occur in the first place.** By becoming more aware of the potential errors, you are more likely to spot them when they happen and be able to minimise their effects. - **To overcome fundamental attribution error, get group members to actively think of times when situational factors were a factor.** Ask yourself whether you would have acted in a particular way; list possible explanations including situational ones. Standing up and actively having to justify your opinion always helps! - **Make sure the group is not just one unified group with similar opinions. Instead ensure it has diversity and that the leader's appointment will not overpower the group and suppress challenge.** ## Strategies to Avoid Confirmation Bias - Researchers studied confirmation bias by creating groups that were: - unanimous in their initial preference - composed of at least one member who took a minority position on the issue - composed of two minority members. - It was found that unanimous groups showed stronger confirmation bias than those with more diverse members. In fact, groups with two minority members actually were better than individual members in terms of overcoming confirmation bias. ## Evaluating Cognitive Limitations and Errors - One strength is that the theory of cognitive errors and limitations in group decision- making has been supported by research. For example, Osmani (2016) looked at the effect of heuristics and cognitive biases on group decision making and found that confirmation bias is more common in groups than in individuals when making decisions: when groups were presented with two projects, one with a sunk cost and one without a sunk cost, while only 26 per cent of the group recommended the project when it had no sunk cost, 86 per cent recommended it when it did have a sunk cost. The results provide support to the idea that cognitive errors play a significant role in faulty decision-making, making the theory reliable. ## Issues and Debates - **Application to Everyday Life:** - One strength of Forsyth's cognitive limitation theory is that it has application to everyday life. If it is understood that the formation of groups may increase the likelihood of judgemental bias, and that this is made worse by groups who are unanimous in terms of their previous beliefs, then care can be taken during the group formation stage to ensure that there is a diversity of opinion within the group, and there are members that are not afraid to challenge the group. It also suggests that training in group decision making may be beneficial. Therefore, the principles set out in Forsyth's theory may be said to be useful. - **Reductionism versus Holism:** - One weakness of Forsyth's theory of cognitive limitations is that it can be said to be reductionist. - This is where complex behaviours are broken down into its simplest form. - In this case suggesting that cognitive errors are the reason for faulty decision-making is reductionist. - It does not take into account factors such as stress (which were discussed in alternative theories such as groupthink) and factors such as sleep deprivation which may affect decisions. - This makes Forsyth's theory simplistic and suggests that it is not a complete theory of decision-making. - **Cultural Differences:** - Another weakness of Forsyth's theory is that it fails to take into account cultural differences. - It may be that some of the cognitive errors suggested in the theory only