Letters Helped Challenger Shuttle Engineer Shed 30 Years Of Guilt
The headline caught my attention. The Challenger space shuttle disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the orbiter broke up 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all on board.
The core cause of the Challenger disaster as determined by extensive review, was the failure of O-rings sealing crucial parts of the rockets due to extreme cold temperature at launch. Despite extensive discussion of the weather and its implications for the craft’s integrity, NASA went ahead with the launch. Bob Ebeling, the subject of the NPR story linked to above, was one of the engineers trying to halt the launch. He was overruled and has spent the rest of his life wracked with guilt, wondering why he didn’t do more or what he could have done differently. He is 89 years old.
The disaster is etched in my memory for many reasons, not the least of which was the tragic death of an elementary teacher, Christa Mcauliffe, on board the mission that day. The other reason the story caught my attention is that the Challenger disaster is a well-known case study taught in many courses that cover group decision making. Beyond the immediate mechanical cause of the disaster, the other conclusion was a poor decision making climate within NASA and the launch team. This case has become exhibit one for Groupthink.
Irving Janis’ original conceptualization required three antecedent conditions for Groupthink:
- High cohesiveness, with group harmony elevated over individual expression
- Structural faults, including insulation of the group from outside ideas and opinions, highly directive leadership, homogeneity of member background and ideology
- Difficult situational context, exemplified by highly stressful external threats, recent failures, excessive difficulty coming to a decision, and moral dilemmas.
Janis further outlined groupthink symptoms: an illusion of invulnerability, rationalization to discount warnings and other negative feedback, belief in the inherent morality of the group, stereotyped views of members of opposing groups, pressure on dissenters, self-censorship, illusion of unanimity, and self-appointed “mindguards” acting to shield the group from adverse information.
There is no doubt that NASA’s culture, a series of failures leading up to the Challenger decision (high stakes), and a hierarchical, closed-minded atmosphere in the launch team contributed to the disaster, that the case matches the groupthink model well. But forever linking a vivid tragedy to groupthink has elevated the concept to Truth. Groupthink is presented in nearly every organizational behavior textbook as fact. It is one of those ubiquitous terms that has lost its original meaning, and has come to mean “any set of group processes that are antecedent to poor decision making.” This is tautological, suggesting “that groupthink is all those bad things that precede poor outcomes.” Instead, “the groupthink phenomenon per se lacks empirical support and rests on generally unsupported assumptions.” (Aldag and Fuller, 1998)
When referring to groupthink, most people equate it with excessive cohesion and pressure for conformity. Yet no concrete research evidence has confirmed cohesion as an antecedent to groupthink. The implicit link people make between team cohesiveness and the (negative) groupthink idea is potentially harmful, as many studies connect cohesiveness with positive team outcomes.
Groupthink is a complex and probably rare phenomenon.
Further Reading
*Ramon J. Aldag was my PhD advisor.
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