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Studies in the psychological laboratory 367
Janis and Mann’s Conflict Theory 24 describes a number of basic patterns
of coping with a challenge (threat or opportunity). Intense conflicts, Janis
and Mann argue, are likely to arise whenever a person has to make an
important decision. Such conflicts become acute if the decision maker
becomes aware of the risk of suffering serious losses from whatever
course of action is selected – including pursuing further the current
course of action. Decisional conflicts refer to simultaneous opposing
tendencies within the individual to accept or reject a given course of
action. The most prominent symptoms of such conflicts are hesitation,
vacillation, feelings of uncertainty and signs of acute emotional stress
whenever the decision comes within the focus of attention. According
to Janis and Mann, several types of decisional behavior called ‘coping
patterns’ are a direct result of the conflict. Defensive avoidance can take
three forms: procrastination involves postponing the decision; buck passing
involves shifting the responsibility of the decision to someone else;
bolstering includes exaggerating the favorable consequences of a course
of action and minimizing the unfavorable consequences.
Defensive avoidance is preceded by high stress, since the risks attached
to the current option(s) are seen as serious, but the coping patterns act to
reduce the stress to acceptable levels. Clearly, once having made a stressful
high-consequence decision – without the option of buck passing the
responsibility elsewhere – an individual’s coping pattern of bolstering
the decision involves components of the escalation process described
earlier. 25
Additionally, a small, highly cohesive management team faced with
a decision dilemma is likely to become so concerned about group
solidarity that individual deficiencies in information processing and
decision making will be magnified. Structural faults in the organization
(such as insulation of the management team from individuals or groups
of individuals who might challenge their decision making, homogeneity
of the management team’s social background, and lack of methodical,
even-handed procedures for dealing with controversial issues) will tend
to produce ‘groupthink’ 26 in such high-consequence situations. As we
saw in Chapter 12, groupthink is essentially the suppression of ideas
that are critical of the ‘direction’ in which a group is moving. It is
reflected in a tendency to concur with the position and views that are
perceived as favored by the group. Such cohesive groups may develop
rationalizations for the invulnerability of the group’s decision or strategy
and inhibit the expression of critical ideas by dissenting members of the
management team. These pitfalls of groupthink are likely to magnify
individual failure to evaluate carefully alternative courses of action or