Being Wrong - Kathryn Schulz [75]
The antisuffragists of the Appenzells are a case in point. As women’s suffrage became more established in Switzerland and more common the world over, outside pressure increased on the cantons to extend the vote to women. But the Appenzellerites remained unmoved—precisely because this pressure came from outside. As Banaszak wrote in a book comparing the Swiss and American suffrage movements, Swiss opponents of suffrage regarded women’s voting rights as an “unwanted reform” that “was being forced upon them by the national government, politicians, the press, and foreign influences.” In fact, if outside pressure moved the men of Appenzell at all, it moved them toward a more extreme position. Banaszak quotes a suffragist who recalled meeting a man from the Appenzells who was inclined to support women’s suffrage until “he was at the Landsgemeinde and saw the ring of people, people from outside Appenzell, who screamed out so loud [in protest] that the members had to ask for silence.”* Far from making us reevaluate our beliefs, external opposition—especially opposition that we perceive as threatening or insulting—tends to make us dig our heels in even more.
This leads to something of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t predicament—because, as it turns out, not being exposed to external opposition can also make us grow more adamant about our beliefs. This is the infamous phenomenon known as groupthink. In 1972, the psychologist Irving Janis defined groupthink as, “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.” Groupthink most commonly affects homogenous, close-knit communities that are overly insulated from internal and external criticism, and that perceive themselves as different from or under attack by outsiders. Its symptoms include censorship of dissent, rejection or rationalization of criticisms, the conviction of moral superiority, and the demonization of those who hold opposing beliefs. It typically leads to the incomplete or inaccurate assessment of information, the failure to seriously consider other possible options, a tendency to make rash decisions, and the refusal to reevaluate or alter those decisions once they’ve been made.
Shall I even bother naming names? Janis cited as victims of groupthink the Kennedy Administration during the Bay of Pigs disaster and the Johnson Administration in Vietnam, and plenty of readers are no doubt mentally adding the latest Bush Administration and its prosecution of the Iraq War. Plainly, the consequences of groupthink can be catastrophic. But even the mere existence of the phenomenon is troubling. It seems that participation in communities of believers—which, as I’ve already noted, is both inevitable, pleasurable, and psychologically indispensable—can drive us toward a degree of conviction, and a degree of extremity, that we might not otherwise feel. It’s as if our own inner world is oddly more capacious than the outer one, able to accommodate a degree of ambiguity that is all too often foreclosed by the boosterism of our cohort or the skepticism of outsiders. This suggests that our communities can be dangerous for our intellectual and moral health. And that, in turn, suggests that we all live, perpetually, on the horns of a dilemma—because if it is intellectually and