Friendship and group identification: a new look at the role of cohesiveness in groupthink

This article proposes that research has failed to clarify the causal role of group cohesiveness in groupthink because of a failure to distinguish cohesiveness from friendship. To remedy this, a conceptual distinction, based on social identity theory, is drawn between positive regard grounded in interpersonal relations (personal attraction, friendship), and solidarity grounded in group identification (depersonalized social attraction, true group cohesiveness)—Hogg (1992). An experiment compared the roles of friendship and social attraction in groupthink. Four-person discussion groups of friends, or socially attractive or random groups of strangers, made decisions (N=472). Background conditions for groupthink were established, and a wide range of subjective and behavioural measures of friendship, identification/social attraction, and the decision-making process were taken. Analyses isolated effects associated with friendship/personal attraction, from those associated with identification/social attraction. Friendship was found to be weakly and negatively related to symptoms of groupthink, while group identification and social attraction were strongly and, with some exceptions, positively related to symptoms of groupthink. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.