Carol Tavris' In Groups We Shrink From Loner’s Heroics

Carol Tavris' In Groups We Shrink From Loner’s Heroics

“In Groups We Shrink From Loner’s Heroics” is an essay about how people in groups behave together. The author of this essay believes that when people are in groups they will do nothing to help a person in distress and that they cannot think for themselves. “In Groups We Shrink From Loner’s Heroics”, by Carol Tavris was ineffective because it used logical fallacies, overused pathos, had weak references to logos, and used inductive arguments.

The author of the essay, Carol Tavris, seems to be very passionate about what she is writing. She has her doctorate in Psychology and has had her articles published in many well-known magazines. The intended audience of her essay is the general public. The purpose of this article is to inform the public that they need to stand out and use their own minds in a group setting instead of hiding in the comfort of their fellow friends and colleagues.

The essay is written to be very informal. It uses a lot of connotative language as well as a subjective point of view. The author tries to use facts to support her way of thinking, and also uses some examples and descriptions. The largest downfall to the article is her use of inductive arguments. The author uses true stories and a few case studies, at the beginning of the essay, to show how some people have acted when they are with a group of people. But, the rest of her argument is based on these few studies. She tries to argue that all groups behave as these few examples, in the essay, did. These few, rare occurrences cannot be the basis for an entire argument about how groups behave. They paint too broad of a picture.

The author mainly appeales to pathos. She tells a story of a woman being stabbed while her neighbors look on and also, of a man, named Rodney King, who was beaten by a few police offices while ten other officers looked on. These are good examples for her argument but, she uses these infrequent instances to try and sway her audience into thinking that they are common occurrences.