Clive Thompson over at wired.com wrote an interesting article about how what we like is affected by what people around us like. Most people will recognise this and psychologists call this phenomenon peer pressure. It’s strongest in teens, as every parent who has teen kids can affirm. In adults the process is much more subtle. Group Think, as Thompson calls it, is in psychology something entirely different. In a groupthink situation you’ve got a group who is very close and communicates in jargon. They all think along the same lines and often are led by a directive leader who tells them what to do. What happens next is that they fail to come up with the best solutions because there’s no creativity in the thinking process. In small groups this is too bad for those involved, but it can be very dangerous when it happens to large societies, for instance like the German society during 1933 − 1945.
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