Vancouver, British Columbia
May 15-17, 1996
Charlan Nemeth, Professor
Department of Psychology
University of California, Berkeley
A group already interested in “Leading the Agile Organization” knows the importance of flexibility, good judgment, and creativity. These are not easily accomplished, however. Some elements have been found to be clearly important, among them, 1) the ability to break “set” (the tendency to use old solutions to new problems), 2) a willingness to search for information and to process it in relatively unbiased ways, 3) a consideration of the issue from multiple perspectives, and 4) even (especially for creativity) an ability to “play” with ideas— being often served by “blind variation.” And, often, an important but overlooked element is asking the right questions. This may be aided by a process that Albert Axent Gyorgyi described as the process of “seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” I’m also reminded of Owen Chamberlain’s comment (the Nobel laureate who found the antiproton) that he wasn’t smarter than others, but he had a sense of the right questions.
In this context, I am reminded of Stephen Hawkings’ observation in A Brief History of Time that we rarely think about what is around us— the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning into space— wondering, as do children, “what a black hole looks like... why we remember the past and not the future; how it is, if there was chaos early, that there is apparently order today.” Perhaps this is why researchers often refer to highly creative people as childlike though not childish.
When we ask ourselves how we can achieve flexibility, the proper posing of questions, good decision making, and creativity, we might wonder, “Is it simply a question of intelligence, a motivation to be ’open,’ instructions on how to go about decision making?” They sound like solutions, but, in my judgment, are overblown. Let’s consider intelligence: We often tend to assume that stupid decisions are made by stupid people— yet there are numerous examples (e.g., major cabinet-level policy making) where the “best and the brightest” made decisions that turned out to be major fiascoes, e.g., the Bay of Pigs. When it comes to creativity, it may come as a surprise to you that, after a certain level (i.e., average intelligence), intelligence and creativity are orthogonal, that is, unrelated. And the “simple” processes such as searching for information? We find that people, especially those convinced of the truth of their position, are often unwilling to avail themselves of important pertinent information. For example, in the Bay of Pigs “decision making,” a contingency plan involved traversing several hundred miles of swamp (a plan that obviously failed)— fact that could easily have been discerned from consulting an atlas.
In social psychology, we have learned that influence processes play a considerable role in whether we reassess our views, search for information, and think in divergent or creative ways. Influence processes also often determine how correct the solutions are that we reach, especially in small groups. Influence processes are both the cause, the culprit, and, I maintain, the possible solution. In general, groups are suboptimal in performance. They perform somewhat above the average individual and somewhat below the “best” individual. The question is why, and what is the best “antidote.” You will hear a lot about leadership, about participant decision making, about “corporate culture” and cohesiveness— I want to suggest to you that, my main point today, we need to fear status, power, and majority viewpoints. As Rousseau argued: “Keep this truth ever before you— never did anyone any harm, error alone is fatal and we do not lose our way through ignorance but through self-confidence.” The problem with status and majorities is:
(1) They tend to get people to adopt their viewpoints, right or wrong. Literally hundreds of studies show the power of majority views even when incorrect. People will abdicate the information even from their own senses, e.g., in judging the length of lines, and follow a majority view. Partly they do this because they believe that truth lies in numbers but partly they conform because they fear rejection and dislike from maintaining a “minority” or “deviant” viewpoint. I wish I could tell you that this is an unbased fear but it is not. As John Locke reminded us: “New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed, without other reason, but because they are not already common.”
(2) Status, power, and majorities not only gain adoption of their position but they shape the ways people think such that the thought is focused and narrow (i.e., convergent) from the perspective posed by the majority or those in power.
(3) Majorities also control by the threat of exclusion. There is a reason why “outsiders” in organizational settings show less commitment, more absentee-ism, and higher turnover rates. This “outsider” status may be a function of social categories, e.g., females or African Americans, but can also be a function of the representation within the workplace. It can also be a function of viewpoint.
(4) Finally, this tendency for people to exclude outsiders is part of a general tendency for people to like and to seek “similar” others and leads to a polarization of viewpoints. There is a very substantial literature showing that discussion among “like minded” people leads to a polarization or exaggeration of their views. Thus, through interaction between similar others, you can get extreme views, ones held with great confidence and ones unlikely to shift with subtly changing characteristics.
My second main point is more optimistic and that is that we should “welcome and not fear the voices of dissent” (Fulbright). My own research over the past 20 years is that minority views and, in particular, consistent minority dissent are extremely powerful correctives. They stem the likelihood of unreflective conformity. Even when wrong, a dissenter frees others from the power of the majority (J. S. Mills would say the “tyranny” of the majority) and permits them to make more independent and correct judgments. Perhaps more importantly, minority dissent actually stimulates people to think in more divergent ways and in more creative ways. We have considerable evidence that people search for more information, process it in more unbiased ways, use multiple strategies for problem solving, and detect correct solutions that otherwise would have gone undetected as a result of exposure to minority dissent. Importantly, this process occurs whether or not the minority view is correct. In other words, the value of minority views is not simply that they may be correct; even when incorrect, they serve the detection of truth and the quality of judgment.
It is important to recognize that consistent minority dissent is not achieved at the simple level of diversity of categories. Social categories may but do not necessarily reflect differing viewpoints and it is important to recognize that dissent requires the expression of those dissenting views. We know that social embarrassment, conformist pressures and concerns about “fitting in” tend to thwart the expression of such differing views. Finally, diversity of social categories can bring in considerations of ingroup-outgroup, with a well known tendency for ingroup bias and outgroup derogation.
However, I leave you with some general caveats:
Dissent in general raises the possibility that one may be wrong and we hypothesize and find evidence for the fact that disagreement from either a majority or a minority stimulates thought. However, as John Locke reminds us, “It is one thing to show a man that he is in error and another to put him in possession of truth.”
The problem with majority views is that they are presumed to be true— aided by a style that Mark Twain describes as the “calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.” As such, the thought focuses on that perspective.
The minority, by contrast, stimulates divergent thought about the issue— the minority’s message. Perhaps we are more likely to think about the atoms of which we are made or the lives led by people in poverty when there is discussion and dissent, especially consistent minority dissent.
I suspect that too often we concentrate on the lack of efficiency or the discomfort that minority dissent raises— Oscar Wilde said, “We dislike arguments of any kind; they are always vulgar and often convincing,” but "welcoming... the voices of dissent” we can perhaps find the wonderment of exploration and raise the level of thought and decision making.
Copyright © 1998 by Charlan Nemeth