Question 1

Why do crowds make worse decisions than individuals?

Accepted Answer

Crowds fail when members imitate rather than think independently. Conformity pressure, groupthink, and group polarisation cause people to suppress doubts and echo each other, so individual errors compound instead of cancelling out. This produces decisions no single member would make alone.

Question 2

What is groupthink and who discovered it?

Accepted Answer

Groupthink is a mode of thinking where a group's desire for harmony overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives. The psychologist Irving Janis named it in 1972 after studying disasters like the Bay of Pigs, where talented advisers suppressed their doubts to preserve unanimity.

Question 3

When are crowds actually smart?

Accepted Answer

Crowds are accurate when members judge independently before comparing answers, so their errors offset one another. In 1906 Francis Galton found a fair crowd guessed an ox's weight to within one percent. The key condition is independence, not imitation.

groupthink

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The Mirror That Thinks It Is a Mind