Gripped by Groupthink

The Confidentiality Con exacerbates the tendency of small groups to echo internal communications and to resist external communications.


The Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] and the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] are each Petri dishes for groupthink. When small, cohesive, and insulated groups attribute to their decisions empirical validity and norma­tive superiority that outsiders cannot see, groupthink defeats skepticism and sober second thoughts that might allow groups to correct themselves. Gripped by groupthink, the FAC or the PSC rations or rationalizes away information that might contradict announced or antici­pated decisions, preferring communications that reinforce the committee’s rectitude to those that raise alternative decisions or perspectives. Whatever “multiple narratives” apologists for such committees may eventually concoct, insiders strive for a singular narrative around which they all may rally.

All groups press toward consensus, cohesion, and cooperation, but outsiders’ views may save a committee from conformity, obstinacy, or collusion. Conformity and loyalty afflict the FAC and the PSC because Confidentiality Cons [and other dodges] deny insiders alternative perspectives that might change their minds. Private doubts may be expressed within the committee while communications still flow freely, but once the committee has taken its decision, private doubts are less welcome and, for some who have served on the committees, may not even be acknowledged within the committee or, even more frightening, in private reflection. Even members of a committee who have submitted their scholarly work to referees and have thereby been saved from errors or less than their best work have preferred loyalty to a committee and conformity to a majority to admitting outside perspectives. Power committees do not believe in "multiple narratives." They craft a singular story and stick to it.

When enlargements of confidentiality beyond authorized rules have transmogri­fied restrictions on the free flow of personnel information [that is, confidentiality nar­rowly and properly understood] into protection of committees from alternative perspec­tives and from accountability [that is, confidentiality improperly extended], the FAC and the PSC have been able to close colleagues out of insiders’ circles. This is how Confidentiality Cons [and subsequent cover-ups, buyouts, and other defenses against faculty’s or trustees’ learning what happens on campus] virtually guarantee groupthink.

Groupthink in turn virtually guarantees that power committees will be given in even slightly challenging cases to defensiveness rather than openness, to communications more tactical than sincere, and to superciliousness.