Groupthink: The Bay Of Pigs Fiasco

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Groupthink From the Velasquez excerpt he explains Janis definition of Group think which refers to the susceptibility of groups of people to get increasingly out of touch with reality (Janis 84). Velasquez believes the main cause of groupthink is socials pressures within the group due to the group wanting to get along and keep harmony (Janis 84). When a group really wants to have a good standing relationship with each other they could possibly just agree on something to not upset the others, or to make them not like them for their beliefs and not agreeing resulting in them not evaluating the situation. This negatively affects ones decision making outcome. Groupthink as any other problem has symptoms and we will go over each of these. …show more content…

The Bay of Pigs Fiasco is a great example because it shows how even a group of the smartest people can fall into groupthink. The group of people where very well know, respected, and smart yet they let groupthink affect their end decision and make a terrible choice to invade Cuba. Looking back on the situation it is apparent that some symptoms of groupthink occurred and impacted the situation. The symptoms that this example have are illusion of invulnerability, belief in inherit morality, direct pressure on dissenters, self-censorship. Illusion of invulnerability is apparent here through that everyone that was there was very well known and smart so they thought they could ignore the danger of the idea and wrongs of invasion and be more optimistic about the situation. Believe in inherit morality occurs because they felt they were doing something good for the county in trying to help take down the communist in the country. Direct pressure on dissenters occurred because member felt the pressure to agree so they wouldn’t seem against the rest. Also self-censorship occurred when members held back there opposing views so they wouldn’t be different and stand out from the

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