PHIL 4303 Chapter Notes - Chapter Wk 9: Peer Pressure, Miriam Solomon, Groupthink
11 Apr 2016
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In the first of this week"s two readings, miriam solomon explored the concept of groupthink through close examination of experimental results. In her work groupthink verses the wisdom of crowds: the social epistemology of deliberation and dissent, . Solomon begins by laying out a commonly believed fallacy: collaborative deliberation regarding reasoning and rationalizing does not, contrary to popular belief, lead to better decisions than those that could be made without deliberation. In exploring this result, specifically, solomon points to influences such as peer pressure, pressure from authorities, and pressure to reach consensus as those leading to poor decisions in group deliberations. Interestingly, she also mentions a kind of over-vigilance in trying to remain unbiased and rational in a group-deliberation environment that could lead to a sort of trying-too-hard rigidity in the decision-making. In her analysis, solomon presents the conditions necessary for a group to come to a good decision: independence, diversity and decentralization.
