Closed-mindedness and insulation in groupthink: their effects and the devil’s advocacy as a preventive measure

Abstract

This paper’s purpose is to clarify groupthink phenomena and to assess the devil’s advocacy as a groupthink prevention measure. An agent-based model is presented to formalize group closed-mindedness and insulation in a group decision making setting. The model was validated by showing that groupthink results in the decision with low quality and the group’s inability to explore more alternatives. Besides that, the devil’s advocacy also formulated in the model. The simulation results of different conditions of the devil’s advocacy support Janis’ suggestion to utilize the devil’s advocacy to alleviate groupthink. It is also found that the utilization of devil’s advocacy depends on the group’s condition and the desired amount of conflict to produce the best decision.