Groupthink Occurrences in Lord of the Flies How can groupthink lead to something as serious as murder? Groupthink is an occurrence that happens with a group of people where if many people are agreeing with something they don't wanna be the outcast and disagree. An experiment called the Asch experiment was done in 1951 at Swarthmore College. The experiment was a vision test and everyone knew except one knew what the experiment was. Everyone who was a part of the experiment would answer the wrong answer every time and then the last person who did not know what the experiment was would often answer the same even if it was incorrect. This is an example of Groupthink. In Lord of the Flies, many kids are stuck on an island due to a plane that crashed. …show more content…
In chapter eight Jack gets angry with Ralph because of how he talked about him and his hunters. Jack calls a meeting and he talks bad about Ralph trying to overthrow him as chief. The first time Jack asks if Ralph should not be chief it is silent. The next time he asks if Ralph should be chief this is what happens shown in this quote “The silence continued, breathless and heavy and full of shame. Slowly the red drained from Jack’s cheeks, then came back with a painful rush. He licked his lips and turned his head at an angle, so that his gaze avoided the embarrassment of linking with another’s eye” (Golding 127). This shows groupthink because nobody wanted to be the first one to raise their hand and say Ralph should not be chief, but when nobody is noticing people go to join Jack. Groupthink is also shown, through what they do next to a mama pig and Maurice. Roger first rapes a pig and then sexually assaults Maurice with a spear. Roger starts a chain reaction with people all sexually assaulting Maurice. This is groupthink because when Roger starts doing this everyone joins …show more content…
When Simon goes to the pig, Simon starts hallucinating and thinks the pig is speaking to him. Meanwhile the hunters are naked, painted and people are losing their identity. Groupthink is again happening because everyone is starting to think that it would be fun to be a savage. The Lord of the Flies says to Simon that everyone is gonna become savage and kill him. Simon loses consciousness, but then later wakes up and he realizes he needs to tell everyone that there is no beast. When Simon gets to where everyone is, the savages all crowd around Simon and start chanting. Simon screams out about there being no beast but this is what happened “the beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt onto the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws” (Golding 153). This is groupthink because everyone becomes a savage and attacks Simon. This is tremendously negative as they just murdered someone just from
In this book many kids are stuck on an island due to a plane that crashed. Ralph and Piggy are main characters and they both give in to groupthink. In this book, especially groupthink has more negative consequences than good ones. Groupthink is something that happens with a group of people where if many people are agreeing with something they don't wanna be the outcast and disagree. An experiment called the Asch experiment was done in 1951 at Swarthmore College. The experiment was a vision test and everyone knew except one knew what the experiment was. Everyone who was a part of the experiment would answer the wrong answer every time and then the last person who did not know what the experiment was would often
While they agree that the beast is not a traditional monster, it is Simon’s philosophical understanding that allows him to fully realize the meaning of the beast. At the assembly, Ralph plans to discuss the beast, hoping to bring the fear to an end. Simon suggests that the boys themselves are the beast. Later, when Simon encounters the “Lord of the Flies” in a hallucination, the reader learns the extent of his understanding. The Lord of the Flies mocks Simon by saying, “Fancy you thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill...You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?”(128). Simon realizes that there is something within humans that can cause them to act savagely. However, at the assembly, in an effort to understand what Simon meant about the beast, the boys suggest that the beast could be a ghost. Piggy firmly rejects this idea because he approaches the beast in the same way he handles most situations: logically and scientifically. As Piggy states, “Life… is scientific, that’s what it is…. I know there isn’t no beast- not with claws and all that, I mean- but I know there isn’t no fear either… unless we get afraid of people” (72). Piggy understands fear can have detrimental effects, but he does not yet understand that fear is within every person, and this is the “beast” that can cause people to act without
“I cannot believe there is caste system in society; I cannot believe people are judged on the basis of their prosperity.” No matter how much you’ve got to bring to the table, society will always find a way to put you down and aim for something else whether that something is worst or better than what you have to offer. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding has shown this external conflict several times throughout the story with characters such as Ralph and piggy. The conflict of character vs. society is present in these characters: Ralph, the elected chief of the group of British schoolboys is constantly having to remind the group of the bigger picture; Piggy, ultimately the brain of the
The need for social order is a very common theme throughout The Lord of the Flies. Over the course of the novel the reader witnesses the slow collapse of all forms of order, government, and civilization on the island. The results of this collapse are astounding. Golding writes, “As they watched, a flash of fire appeared at the root of one wisp, and then the smoke thickened. Small flames stirred at the trunk of a tree and crawled away through leaves and brushwood, dividing and increasing… Beneath the capering boys a quarter of a mile square of forest was savage with smoke and flame” (Golding 44). This quote marks the first point when the boy’s Civilization begins to collapse. If the boys had person overlook the building
Throughout the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, many different conflicting societies develop. These groups of young English schoolboys have conflicts between them for many different reasons. Some of them are so spread apart in age that their beliefs and actions are very different. Other groups are conflicting because they have different opinions about who the leader of the entire group should be. The groups also argue about what their priorities should be while trapped on the island. These conflicts continue to grow until the very end, when one group finally gains supremacy.
There are always people who, in a group, come out with better qualities to be a leader than others. The strongest people however, become the greater influences which the others decide to follow. However, sometimes the strongest person is not the best choice. Authors often show how humans select this stronger person to give an understanding of the different powers that people can posses over others.
Many refer to it as the Lord of the Flies, Simon, though, offers a different approach to the matter. Regarding the beast, Simon’s “inward sight the picture of a” man “once heroic and sick”. This gives proof to Simon wisdom, making him stands on a superior level in terms of intelligence and philosophy from the other boys. Simon recognizes the beast’s true identity when he attempts to explain to the boys that there is no real beast, it’s only the fear of themselves. "What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us.” (Golding 89) However, his “effort fell about him in ruins;” as “the laughter beat him cruelly and he shrank away defenseless to his seat.” (Golding 89) The response Simon receives show that the audience is not ready to accept the meaningful truth, that the fear of themselves causes a deception among the boys to create an illusion of a fleshly beast. Simon is willing to persist on a quest of unraveling the false beast, because he wants the boys to face their fear, the beast within themselves. Along the way, he comes face to face with the Lord of the Flies, literally described as a severed pig’s head impaled upon a stake, “a gift for the beast” (Golding 137). The encounter consolidates the idea that the real beast is more about the concept of evil, which is what the figure represents, than a physical creature that can do harm to the community. Fearing that
The Lord of the Flies suggests that his presence is the reason for the boys’ descent into savagery and madness, beginning with the children’s fear of the beast’s existence, followed by Jack’s brutality when killing the pig as well as his transformation into a savage, finally culminating in the frenzied murder of Simon at the hands of the children who mistake him for the beast. While they are beating Simon to death, they are also chanting "Kill the beast!" Cut his throat. Spill his blood. (Golding 168) and dancing around him, similarly to a tribe of savages.
A group can become overconfident and believe that they are not capable of making mistakes. Options or opposing views may not be taken into consideration because the group believe that they already know the best plan of action. This can lead the group to taking risks that they otherwise might be wearier of.
the story of a group of boys stranded on a deserted island to examine a multitude of
Carl Jung born in 1875, was a Swiss psychologist. He had many theories, one of them being that an individual makes a conscious decision to show the potential evil we all have inside of us. In the lord of the flies this is shown in many ways. When the boys first arrive on the island they all agree to living in a civilized manner, they work together and respond to a leader. By encouraging others to believe they will never be rescued, Jack was making a conscience decision to show his potential evil. The movie is an interpretation of the book, and although not depicted in the movie a certain scene shows Jung’s theory strongly. The book says that Simon finds the pig head Jack left as an offering to the ‘monster’ and envisions it as being able to talk. The head says to him that the boys have ‘created the monster’ and the real beast lives inside of them all. Here the pigs head is making a direct reference to Simon and the boy’s inner evil. As time goes on the boys inner evil shows through, they become focused on themselves and surviving. another example is Piggy’s death. The boys who push the boulder on to Piggy, are well aware (conscious) of the implications that action will have on him, but they no longer see anything wrong with killing someone or something as it has begun to become something socially accepted in their group. Jack and his group start no longer seeing things in a logical way because they no longer are part of a society that conducts itself on the basis of what is ethically right, and no longer feel the need to suppress their inner savage, and for this reason things like Simon and Piggy’s death occur.
In 1972, Irving Janis presented a set of hypothesis that he extracted from observing small groups performing problem solving tasks; he collectively referred to these hypotheses as groupthink¹. He defined groupthink as “a quick and easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action²” A successful group brings varied ideas, collective knowledge, and focus on the task at hand. The importance of groups is to accomplish tasks that individuals can not do on their own. The Bay of Pigs, Watergate, and the Challenger disaster are all forms of failure within a group. Specifically, you can see the effect of groupthink of Americans before September 11, 2001. The thought of harm to the United States was unfathomable, but only after the attacks did they realize they were not invincible. When a solid, highly cohesive group is only concerned with maintaining agreement, they fail to see their alternatives and any other available options. When a group experiences groupthink, they may feel uninterested about a task, don't feel like they will be successful, and the group members do not challenge ideas. Stress is also a factor in the failure of groupthink. An effective group needs to have clear goals, trust, accountability, support, and training. Some indicators that groupthink may be happening are; making unethical decisions, they think they are never wrong, close-minded about situations, and ignore important information. Many things can be done to prevent groupthink from happening. One way is to make each person in the group a “critical evaluator”. The leader must ...
of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The
There are eight symptoms of groupthink. The first symptom is when all or most of the group view themselves as invincible which causes them to make decisions that may be risky. The group has an enormous amount of confidence and authority in their decisions as well as in themselves. They see themselves collectively better in all ways than any other group and they believe the event will go well not because of what it is, but because they are involved. The second symptom is the belief of the group that they are moral and upstanding, which leads the group to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of the decisions. The group engages in a total overestimation of its morality. There is never any question that the group is not doing the right thing, they just act. The disregarding of information or warnings that may lead to changes in past policy is the third symptom. Even if there is considerable evidence against their standpoint, they see no problems with their plan. Stereotyping of enemy leaders or others as weak or stupid is the fourth symptom. This symptom leads to close-mindedness to other individuals and their opinions. The fifth symptom is the self-censorship of an individual causing him to overlook his doubts. A group member basically keeps his mouth shut so the group can continue in harmony. Symptom number six refers to the illusion of unanimity; going along with the majority, and the assumption that silence signifies consent. Sometimes a group member who questions the rightness of the goals is pressured by others into concurring or agreeing, this is symptom number seven. The last symptom is the members that set themselves up as a buffer to protect the group from adverse information that may destroy their shared contentment regarding the group’s ...
Groupthink is the psychological phenomenon in which groups working on a task think along the same lines which could have drastic results. It is the result of group polarization where discussions are enhance or exaggerate the initial leanings of the group. Therefore, if a group leans towards risky situation at the beginning of the discussion on average they will move toward an even riskier position. (Marks, 2015). The idea when everyone think the same no one is really thinking. The drastic outcomes result from people trying to avoid conflict with one another, being highly cohesive, and results is questionable decision making (Oliver, 2013). Houghton Mifflin publication of Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions