Have you ever encountered a situation when a senior member of your product team is overly optimistic or suggests a solution that is risky? You had some concerns about it but didn’t share them because it seemed like the majority was in consensus. Then the team ends up moving forward with a faulty idea without fully considering the true root of the problem or alternative solutions. This is an example of groupthink.

Definition: Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that propels well-intentioned individuals to follow the behavior or opinion of the majority and make suboptimal decisions for the sake of conformity.

Groupthink occurs when highly cohesive teams lose sight of individual thoughts and opinions. Dissenting ideas or disagreements are consciously avoided or unconsciously ignored because of the desire for unanimity and to maintain harmony.

In most cases, product teams actively plan and strive to create a collaborative environment. But does collaboration mean we have to all agree? No. When we work in highly cohesive teams and are deeply involved in making decisions with a “solidarity” mentality, we often fall into the trap of groupthink. Our motivation to come to a consensus overrides the consideration of alternative approaches or ideas. The concurrence-seeking tendency of highly cohesive teams can often result in poor decision making.

In This Article:

Common Symptoms of Groupthink

How can we prevent a groupthink from happening? We must start by understanding the signs and symptoms of groupthink. Irving Yanis, a social psychologist who researched groupthink, came up with eight symptoms of groupthink. In the context of UX-work environments, these four are the most common:

  • Collective rationalization: Members of a group rationalize any warnings or negative evidence that come up. Instead of discussing the concerns, group members come up with explanations around why they are not worrisome and sometimes even discredit the concerns.
  • Illusion of unanimity: Members of a group assume that, because everyone is silent, they are all in agreement with each other. The silence is perceived as consensus.
  • Self-censorship: A member of a group remains silent, withholds any dissenting views, or tempers their words because they are under the impression that the group is in consensus. Sometimes, the member even starts to doubt their own dissenting views because it seems like everyone is under agreement.
  • Direct pressure on dissenters: Any argument against the group’s opinions, decisions, ideas or rationales is poorly received, with group members pressuring dissenters to change their opinions. This behavior sends the message that people shouldn’t speak up when they disagree.

UX Considerations and Guidelines for Preventing Groupthink

Groupthink can lead to poor decision making. Here are 5 common scenarios where groupthink occurs in UX and guidelines on how we can prevent it:

1. During group ideation: Groupthink often occurs when we informally ideate with a lack of focus. Perhaps, you and your team are exploring the visual design of a design feature. The designer on the team quickly takes control, because of their skills in drawing, and leaves others feeling inadequate. People favor the first fully formed idea that the designer suggests. Those who may have dissenting ideas do not dare to share them because they are intimidated by both the authority  of the designer and the apparent consensus of the rest of the group. (Note that this scenario is not specific to design — any person or subgroup who has authority in a domain may influence ideation if the ideation is related to that domain.)

How to prevent this: 

  • Communicate group norms at the beginning: Before any ideation session, communicate group norms — such as “there are no stupid questions or ideas.” There could also be rules around conflicting ideas. For example, “if you see an idea you disagree with, comment on your concern but also validate why this idea may have come up.” These rules can stimulate ideation and ongoing dialogue around ideas instead of intimidating others.
  • Start with solo ideation: Give group members the chance to ideate on their own first. Then, have them identify top ideas to share with the group. This approach gives shy people the chance to contribute in a way that is comfortable for them. It also ensures that all ideas are represented in an unbiased way. 

2. During UX workshops: Facilitators have an important role in UX workshops. They help make sure diverse perspectives are heard and aim to provide objective guidance to help progress towards a goal. Sometimes, group members perceive the facilitator as a decision maker because they are running the workshop; this perception can lead to groupthink.

How to prevent this:

  • Build an awareness around groupthink: In the beginning of a workshop, discuss what groupthink is to build awareness. Explain the role of the facilitator as someone who helps guide activities but isn’t a participant in the activities. Establish that everyone’s thoughts and ideas are welcome, even if they may be different from others.
  • Include solo and group activities: Give participants the opportunity to work on their own and as a group. This approach provides the opportunity to practice the diverge--converge technique, where team members work independently and then discuss outputs in order to decide on a collective output. The facilitator should support the activities by walking the participants through the diverge-converge technique. This approach prevents the facilitator from speaking too much and creates space for group members’ contributions.
  • Consider dot voting in decision making: When trying to reach a consensus within a group, consider dot voting. Dot voting is a tool used to democratically prioritize items and make decisions. In dot voting, we give group members a certain number of “dot” stickers, specify voting constraints, have them vote, and calculate the outcome. This is a way to have all members of a group fairly represented and avoid a situation where the facilitator makes the final decision. Additionally, several “best” candidates (rather than a unique one) often emerge in dot voting. (That being said, even with dot voting, participants may be influenced in their decision by where other people have placed their votes; if that is a danger, experiment with blind dot voting, where participants do not see others’ votes when they are casting their own.)

3. When conducting focus groups: Focus groups are a qualitative, attitudinal UX-research methodology that often leads to groupthink. The group dynamics of a focus group can sometimes impact how much or how little people share. Often participants in a focus group will conform to what the rest of the group thinks. One strong personality can shape what others reveal and disproportionately represent opinions.

How to prevent this:

  • Recruit carefully: If you want to avoid disproportionate representation, recruit a diverse set of group members. Find the tricky balance between people with similar user motivations and goals while also including a mix of backgrounds to avoid biases. Otherwise, you will end up with a group of people who all agree with one another and miss key perspectives. Let’s say you have a westernized sample, but the product is a global offering. A user from another country might have different views and opinions because of their cultural background. Creating personas, archetypes or jobs-to-be done can help identify recruiting criteria.
  • Give participants a warmup activity: Start the focus group session with an easy, low stakes warmup to help participants build rapport with the facilitator and other members of the group. The warmup also gets them comfortable speaking out loud in this context. An experienced facilitator who can manage the conversation is critical in almost all settings.

4. Following UX-design trends: Trends are exciting but not all UX trends are right for you.

We are seeing new UX design trends year after year, largely because innovation in technology is happening at such a fast rate. When groups collectively get together to discuss a design trend, people get easily swayed by the new solution to a design problem rather than getting a better understanding of the problem itself. Sometimes, groups or individuals see a competitor following the design trend and start to believe it is the best solution for them as well because they want to remain competitive and keep their users. They form an overconfidence in a new idea that might end up failing.

How to prevent this:

  • Develop processes around evaluating a new trend:
    • Have your users test the trend on the competitor’s site. Your users may be different than your competitor’s users and the new trend may be wrong for them, so it’s important to test with users of your product, unless the other site is not a direct competitor. In this case, the test participants should be users of the competitor product.
    • Reprioritize backlog items and understand whether it is worth taking on a new trend. This process should involve stakeholders from multiple disciplines to ensure you get the full picture of what tasks need to be completed and of the cost involved versus the value added.

5. In virtual environments: As many of us have moved into a remote-work setting, groupthink has gotten worse in many ways:

  • Dominant host for meetings: Typically, the host is the same for recurring meetings, which reinforces this person’s authority. Plus, the host may end up dominating most of the conversation because in a virtual setting it is hard to speak up, interrupt people, and naturally share thoughts.  
  • Screen fatigue: It’s hard to stare at a screen for a long time. Zoom meetings tend to be quicker for that reason and there may be an added pressure to keep silent in order to finish the meeting on time. Plus, the mental effort required to speak up may be too much for an audience already exhausted from a day full of meetings and can exacerbate groupthink.
  • Multiple channels to share ideas (e.g., chat, audio, screen sharing): While a variety of media available to express thoughts  gives flexibility to people and makes it easier to share thoughts, it can also increase cognitive load  as the host (and the participants) may have to monitor different channels. Written comments in the chat don’t have as much context all the time and require more verbal explanation, plus sometimes they can be simply missed by both the facilitator and the other meeting participants.  

How to prevent this:

  • Rotate meeting hosts: This approach lets multiple voices be heard.  It also prevents meetings from feeling monotonous. When a meeting is monotonous, people tend to tune out and we often end up with only a few participants sharing their opinions.
  • Create an anonymous follow-up activity: Such an activity allows people who are quieter or didn’t feel comfortable speaking up share their ideas or concerns. You could use Google Forms to collect information and give people the option to stay anonymous.
  • Have purpose for each channel and communicate it: Before a virtual meeting, explain what the chat and virtual tools can be used for. Clear rules allow the facilitator to manage these channels more effectively in real time and avoid any one-sided conversations. For example, you can ask members to add their questions to the chat and, in that way, you will know that, when you have a chat notification, it is a question.

Conclusion

Groups benefit from hearing diverse perspectives. For that to happen, group members have to feel comfortable in sharing their thoughts. We need to intentionally build awareness around groupthink, acknowledge that it occurs in group settings, and create a work environment that prevents it from happening. Groupthink can be dangerous and may lead to poor decision making and inefficient problem solving. It’s our role, as members of different groups, to bring awareness of groupthink to the forefront and make active changes around how we work together.

Reverences

Irving Janis and Em Griffin. 1991. Groupthink. In A First Look at Communication Theory. McGrawHill, 235–246.