Have We All Gone Mad?: Why groupthink is rising and how to stop it - Hardcover

Booth, Jerome

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1785907727 ISBN 13: 9781785907722

Publisher: Biteback Publishing, 2023

Synopsis

We like to think of ourselves as rational, but human beings are fundamentally irrational creatures – and nowhere is that more apparent than in the fug of groupthink we see around us, from the boardroom to social media.

Of the various forms of collective irrationality, groupthink is particularly dangerous. It involves adherence to a faulty consensus, often has a binary moral dimension (one is seen as either virtuous or evil) and is sustained through fear to challenge. Counter-intuitively, the most intelligent and erudite amongst us are particularly susceptible, and when groupthink takes hold, vigorous efforts are made to shut down debate and to bully and punish transgressors.

As a result, toleration, liberalism, history, reason and science are under threat. Mass groupthink amongst both the elite and the masses affects millions of people. It has led to financial mismanagement leading up to the 2008 crisis and beyond; poor decision-making at the onset of Covid-19; exaggerated, unchallenged claims which have motivated nonsensical policies; and distortions in academia and journalism.

In this remarkable and prescient book, Dr Jerome Booth investigates why some of us have abandoned reason in favour of trite memes, intolerance and hatred. Have we all gone mad? Or can we identify the patterns and causes of what is happening and try to stop it?

About this title

About the Author

Jerome Booth is a well-known economist and emerging markets expert. He has a doctorate in economics from Oxford, has been a national and international civil servant and was a founder of Ashmore Investment Management. He has been chair of Anglia Ruskin University and of UKCF, a major national charity, as well as of a number of arts organisations. His first book, Emerging Markets in an Upside Down World: Challenging Perceptions in Asset Allocation and Investment, a critique of finance theory, was published by Wiley in 2014. He lives in Saffron Walden, UK.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This is a book about mass groupthink, which is a type of mass moral thinking. It is about the impact new technology is having not only on how we communicate but on how we think and self-identify, on our mutual toleration and on our politics. It is a defence of reason and science and history. It is a wake-up call for us to protect our liberal democracy.

Even before Covid-19 and lockdown, it seemed that we were living in an increasingly irrational and anxious world in which mental illness was worsening. This is odd because it follows widespread peace and clear improvements in global health, well-being and economic prosperity. Global inequality has massively reduced in my lifetime and agricultural technology means we can now amply feed the world’s projected population using less land than currently.

We have faced a series of crises which we have poorly prepared for and then dealt with badly on their arrival. Why? There seems to be some dysfunction in our politics and a lack of engagement with electorates. Our political elites and media sometimes appear to be in bubbles of their own, cut off from the majority of public opinion.

Have we all gone mad? Can we identify the patterns and causes of what is happening and try to stop it?

Why did the policy reaction to Covid-19 not take into account the side effects of lockdown? Why did the financial crisis of 2008 occur, and will another one happen? What is behind the recent surge in political correctness? Is net zero sensible or affordable? Why are people becoming disillusioned with democracy?

I have written this book as an attempt to explain what is going on. I argue that the less than satisfactory responses to these and other recent questions have at least one commonality. Mass group think is on the rise. I argue that the current heightened confusion and dissatisfaction within society, including an alienation of many from the ideas and interpretations emanating from political elites and the mainstream media, can best be understood in the context of what we know about psychology and some vicious postmodern memes (a meme here meaning a sort of intellectual virus, a sticky idea which self-replicates across society).

Also, recent changes in communication technology (especially the internet and social media) have had a profound impact on the way we communicate and interact with others. They have affected our networks and communities, our sense of identity, the groups we belong to, our values and moral systems and our tolerance for others. Our Stone Age brains have not yet adjusted to all this, and our societies and political systems haven’t either.

That our brains have evolved slowly compared to our technology is nothing new. Neither is great complexity in our environment and our need to depend on shortcuts in our thinking. Such shortcuts include norms of behaviour but also standard patterns of thought, introduction association of ideas and concepts of right and wrong. Shortcuts in thinking are common and inevitable, and immensely useful, but can also get us into deep water. When we don’t have the same ideas and values, they may be constructively challenged. When we do, the result can be collective irrationality. Our common ideas and shortcuts can seriously let us down when we face particularly marked changes in our environment. We may also find it difficult to cope if these shortcuts for whatever reason change rapidly. Yet they are fashioned by rapidly changing networks and interactions, and this is particularly worrying where such change is non-random but rather orchestrated by others for profit or control.

Of the various forms of collective irrationality, groupthink is particularly dangerous. It occurs where a partially or completely false set of beliefs is sustained through lack of effective challenge. It thrives unnoticed by those captured by it. At worst, groupthink becomes moral and binary, good versus evil; one either believes wholeheartedly or is a heretic, with no room for doubt. Transgressors can be bullied, ostracised, punished, and vigorous efforts are made to stop any challenge or debate.

Avoidance of criticism and refusal to consider alternatives, consciously or unconsciously, has led to momentous mistakes through out history. Irving Janis, who popularised the term groupthink, which is deliberately resonant with Orwell’s doublethink, used as an example the uncritical thinking in the John F. Kennedy Cabinet that led to the abortive 1961 US invasion of Cuba known as the Bay of Pigs disaster. In considering the military strategy, they did not give sufficient attention to the flaws in the plan or its alternatives. Discussion was limited within unquestioned parameters. The group assumed the President backed the invasion and nobody publicly questioned the overall wisdom of it, only the details. Afterwards, Kennedy recognised the faulty planning and adopted an approach to avoid repeats. This was then successfully deployed in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when it seemed the world was on the brink of nuclear war. In responding to the threat posed by the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, just off the US coast, Kennedy formed groups to consider different strategic options and stayed out of them so they would not be overly influenced by his preliminary views. There was a process of rigorous challenge and consideration of different policy options. Unlike with the Bay of Pigs fiasco, good choices were made and a successful result achieved.

Janis’s concept of groupthink has been used by management consultants advising on how to make better board decisions ever since. Although Janis’s emphasis was on small-group decision-making, groupthink can be society-wide. In large-scale groupthink, as fear of transgression builds, particularly amongst elites, so too does ac quiescence. Self-censorship takes hold and public discourse suffers.

Edition details

• Publisher: Biteback Publishing
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1785907727
• ISBN 13: 9781785907722
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320