SUMMARY OF IRVING JANIS' ANALYSIS OF FOREIGN POLICY CASE STUDIES.

Executive Summary: The author Irving Janis examined case studies of successful and unsuccessful U.S. foreign policy decisions, and concluded that excessive concurrence-seeking behavior played a major role in the unsuccessful decisions.  Janis identified both the symptoms of excessive concurrence-seeking behavior, which he termed "Groupthink," and tentative prescriptions for reducing the potential for Groupthink.  While Janis recognized the positive role that concurrence-seeking played in the development of group cohesiveness, he argued that it was possible to achieve sufficient group cohesiveness without risking the negative consequences on decision making caused by excessive concurrence seeking.  The implications of Janis' research clearly extend beyond the realm of foreign policy issues to decision making processes in general. 

General Overview

Irving Janis developed the hypothesis which led to his book on "Groupthink" while reading an account of the Bay of Pigs fiasco during the Kennedy administration.  Almost immediately after the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, it became apparent that the Kennedy administration's decision to actively support the Cuban exile invasion was a very poor decision, and that the invasion never had a substantial probability chance of success.  In reading detailed accounts of this decision making process, Janis was motivated to examine other foreign policy miscues in a search for common themes in the processes which led to poor decisions.  He later examined the processes which led to successful decisions, and contrasted those with the processes which had led to poor outcomes.

In reviewing the decision-making process in the Bay of Pigs case, Janis recognized patterns of concurrence-seeking behavior that he had observed in other social psychological research among small groups.  One of Janis' previous research interests had been the behavior of groups which exhibited a high degree of cohesiveness; his research had identified both positive and negative behaviors of cohesive groups such as air crews, infantry platoons, and others.  One of the negative behaviors of such groups was a tendency to prioritize the ongoing, cohesive existence of the group ahead of other objectives, even when the other objectives are more closely related to the "official" reason why the group had been formed.  For example, a support group of smokers who were attempting to quit smoking began exerting pressure on members to accept the view that smoking was highly addictive and that it was very unlikely that one could successfully quit.  Janis' conclusion was that if the smokers were successful in quitting, the existence of the group would no longer be necessary, and the members prioritized the continuation of the group over successfully quitting smoking.

While the group of smokers was an extreme example, the overall theme that emerged from Janis' research was the prevalence of group behaviors which encouraged cohesiveness and punished any form of conflict or discord.  Janis referred to such group behaviors collectively as "Groupthink."  In his analysis of three U.S. foreign policy "fiascos" in addition to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Janis found such behaviors to be extremely common, although usually exhibited with more subtlety.  (The three negative examples Janis researched in detail were a) the failure to adequately prepare for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the outbreak of the Korean War, and the escalation of the war in Vietnam during the Johnson administration.)

Ultimately, Janis identified six major defects which contributed to the foreign policy errors he analyzed.  These defects were:

1) The decision-making groups explored a very small number of decision alternatives, often only one or two.  This often lent an aura of inevitability to alternative that was eventually chosen.

2) Once an alternative was rejected, decision makers failed to step back and consider whether the alternative had any compelling but non-obvious benefits which they had initially overlooked.

3) Once an alternative had been chosen, the decision makers failed to step back and make sure that they had not overlooked any major drawbacks to that alternative.  Included in such a failure was a strong effort to shield the leader of the group from any anxieties or reservations about the alternative that had been selected.

4) Decision makers failed to solicit information from experts, even in cases where access to experts was easily obtainable.

5) Decision makers applied selective bias towards any information from external sources which was already in the public domain; they quickly rejected information which did not conform to their initial views.  These views often contained a host of embedded assumption which were incorrect, including assumptions about adversaries which tended to inaccurately minimize the capabilities of adversaries.

6) Decision makers failed to anticipate likely obstacles or setbacks, and therefore failed to develop contingency plans to address them.

Janis also analyzed two major foreign policy decisions which he believed had proven to be good choices: a) the creation of the Marshall Plan, and the U.S. response to the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Given this analysis, Janis identified several "prescriptive hypotheses" which he believed might address these problems.  (Janis used this cautious language because he had no available research to prove that his prescriptions would be effective.)   They included the following:

1) The leader of a decision-making group should assign the role of "critical evaluator" to each member of the group, and encourage group members to openly articulate any doubts or concerns.  Most important, the leader should "walk the talk" by avoiding negative responses when his/her ideas are subjected to criticism.

2) The leader of the group should avoid communicating his/her own preferences, since subordinates often exhibited a strong tendency to bias deliberations in favor of the preferences of the leader.  At the outset of the process, the leader should limits his/her comments to neutral statements about the scope of the problem and the level of available resources.  (Janis notes that Secretary of State George Marshall conveyed so little information about his personal views that George Keenan, who led the working group formulating many provisions of a potential European assistance plan, found out that his recommendations had been accepted only when he read about a speech of Marshall's in the newspaper.)

3) For major decisions, several different groups should deliberate separately on the same issue.

4) At least one qualified individual within the organization who is not a member of the core decision-making group should be invited to each meeting and encouraged to challenge the views of the core group.

5) At each meeting, one member of the core group should be assigned the role of "devil's advocate."

6) After reaching preliminary consensus, the decision makers should hold a "second chance" meeting in which all group members express any residual doubts regarding the preliminary consensus.  Janis quotes former General Motors CEO Alfred Sloan saying to his senior managers, "I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.  Therefore, I propose we postpone further discussion until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about." 

Obviously, in fast-moving environments, time does not always permit such extensive deliberation.  However, Janis' research focused on extremely important decisions with major, ongoing consequences and commitments, such as decisions to go to war.