Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1995, page 35
and objections leaders should be impartial and refrain from making their personal
preferences explicit at the outset of the group‟s inquiries members should be encouraged
to discuss the group‟s deliberations with trusted associates outside the group and to report
back their reactions different outside experts should be brought in from time to time to
challenge the views of members there should be one or more devil‟s advocates during
group meetings and lastly, a second-chance meeting should be held to reconsider the
decision once it has been reached but before it is put into practice or made available to the
public.
These suggestions place Janis‟s model in the advantageous position of coming down
favorably on both sides of the aforementioned ideological struggle. It is, to be sure, Janis‟s
genius that has positioned the groupthink model as both a group pathology and a solution
or means of minimizing the pathology. In this positioning, Janis‟s model overtly declares
itself a champion of the alert critical individual, all the while touting the need for effective
and cohesive teams to make important decisions. It is clear that Janis never recommends
that nonroutine, complex decisions be made by the individual and not the group his is a
fear of conformity and therein the loss of a clear grasp of reality, not a romantic
proclamation of unbridled or even enlightened despotism.
Difficulties in Expanding Groupthink to Cultic Studies
The success of Janis‟s groupthink model, I am arguing, comes from its realism,
generalizability, counterintuitiveness, and ideological mincing. At first blush, students of
cults may be tempted to import Janis‟s groupthink model intact. It is, after all,
generalizable. It addresses erratic decision making in highly-insulated, overly-cohesive,
charismatically-led, value-charged, secretive groups which often find themselves in
provocative or stressful situations. But caution and, in my view, care are required before
accepting Janis‟s model of groupthink as adequate to the task of explaining decision-making
processes in cults. There are four key assumptions in Janis‟s model which I believe require
thinking about when using the groupthink model, unchanged, to explain wild decision
making done by and within cults (Galanter, 1989).
As Aldag and Fuller (1993) make clear, Janis makes two assumptions, both of which fit the
policy advisorial groups he studied but do not apply equally well to groups generally. The
first assumption is that the primary purpose or raison d‟être of the group is problem solving,
which at times Janis calls decision making. The second assumption is that in Janis‟s groups
it was clear who was supposed to make decisions. These assumptions do not hold well at all
when we move from decision-making groups like political policy advisors to members of a
cult.
Cults do not exist primarily to make decisions. The fact that decisions are made by cults
seems incidental. This issue is very vital--for Janis‟s logic, when driven to its essence, is
that groups whose primary aim is to make high-quality decisions fail to do so when the
group becomes overly preoccupied with concurrence-seeking behaviors. However, it is not
clear that groups whose primary aim may be the socialization of individuals to new belief
systems fail to accomplish their primary aim when they engage in concurrence seeking.
Indeed, one can argue that the wild and erratic decisions made by cults is an unintended
consequence of the cults‟ effort to pursue concurrence seeking as a means of socializing
members to a new belief system.
The second assumption inherent in Janis‟s groupthink model which is not easily transferable
to the study of cults is that we all know who ought to make decisions in the group. Janis‟s
focus on clearly demarcated or explicitly bounded advisory groups bolsters its heuristic
scope and the apparent clarity of its findings by assuming that the group is a simple task
unit, not a complex coalition of neophytes, veterans, and elites. Indeed, Janis not only
assumes that we all know who is in the decision-making group, but that within the group
and objections leaders should be impartial and refrain from making their personal
preferences explicit at the outset of the group‟s inquiries members should be encouraged
to discuss the group‟s deliberations with trusted associates outside the group and to report
back their reactions different outside experts should be brought in from time to time to
challenge the views of members there should be one or more devil‟s advocates during
group meetings and lastly, a second-chance meeting should be held to reconsider the
decision once it has been reached but before it is put into practice or made available to the
public.
These suggestions place Janis‟s model in the advantageous position of coming down
favorably on both sides of the aforementioned ideological struggle. It is, to be sure, Janis‟s
genius that has positioned the groupthink model as both a group pathology and a solution
or means of minimizing the pathology. In this positioning, Janis‟s model overtly declares
itself a champion of the alert critical individual, all the while touting the need for effective
and cohesive teams to make important decisions. It is clear that Janis never recommends
that nonroutine, complex decisions be made by the individual and not the group his is a
fear of conformity and therein the loss of a clear grasp of reality, not a romantic
proclamation of unbridled or even enlightened despotism.
Difficulties in Expanding Groupthink to Cultic Studies
The success of Janis‟s groupthink model, I am arguing, comes from its realism,
generalizability, counterintuitiveness, and ideological mincing. At first blush, students of
cults may be tempted to import Janis‟s groupthink model intact. It is, after all,
generalizable. It addresses erratic decision making in highly-insulated, overly-cohesive,
charismatically-led, value-charged, secretive groups which often find themselves in
provocative or stressful situations. But caution and, in my view, care are required before
accepting Janis‟s model of groupthink as adequate to the task of explaining decision-making
processes in cults. There are four key assumptions in Janis‟s model which I believe require
thinking about when using the groupthink model, unchanged, to explain wild decision
making done by and within cults (Galanter, 1989).
As Aldag and Fuller (1993) make clear, Janis makes two assumptions, both of which fit the
policy advisorial groups he studied but do not apply equally well to groups generally. The
first assumption is that the primary purpose or raison d‟être of the group is problem solving,
which at times Janis calls decision making. The second assumption is that in Janis‟s groups
it was clear who was supposed to make decisions. These assumptions do not hold well at all
when we move from decision-making groups like political policy advisors to members of a
cult.
Cults do not exist primarily to make decisions. The fact that decisions are made by cults
seems incidental. This issue is very vital--for Janis‟s logic, when driven to its essence, is
that groups whose primary aim is to make high-quality decisions fail to do so when the
group becomes overly preoccupied with concurrence-seeking behaviors. However, it is not
clear that groups whose primary aim may be the socialization of individuals to new belief
systems fail to accomplish their primary aim when they engage in concurrence seeking.
Indeed, one can argue that the wild and erratic decisions made by cults is an unintended
consequence of the cults‟ effort to pursue concurrence seeking as a means of socializing
members to a new belief system.
The second assumption inherent in Janis‟s groupthink model which is not easily transferable
to the study of cults is that we all know who ought to make decisions in the group. Janis‟s
focus on clearly demarcated or explicitly bounded advisory groups bolsters its heuristic
scope and the apparent clarity of its findings by assuming that the group is a simple task
unit, not a complex coalition of neophytes, veterans, and elites. Indeed, Janis not only
assumes that we all know who is in the decision-making group, but that within the group
