Mass Groupthink and Polarization in the Digital Age - Two Courses
Mass Groupthink and Polarization in the Digital Age - Two Courses
How to Reduce Extreme Reactions During Crises in a Technologically Interconnected World.
Covid, climate change, the Ukraine conflict, the war in Gaza, and the culture wars: our opinionated and emotional reactions to these crises are fast, reflexive, and politically polarizing. Opposing camps quickly develop. Empathy and goodwill drain away. The inevitable result is misunderstanding, societal fragmentation, poor policy decisions, and conflict. Our current political behaviour and our mental states are not what is needed to effectively deal with the crises that we face.
Those who purchase the course will:
• Develop the skills to think critically through these crises and help manage them by learning about a key piece of the puzzle: mass groupthink.
• Become part of a global network of people committed to raising their level of political awareness in a period of increased conflict and chaos.
Course Description
We want to help people improve their response to crises at every level in their lives, political, social – even personal - by examining a misunderstood key piece of the puzzle: mass groupthink.
When mass groupthink takes hold, there is an inability to take in dissenting views and a tendency to devalue any opposition. There is no pause to reflect so as to reach for the bigger context. Instead people favour making rapid, appearance-oriented, and emotionally driven, theatrical decisions laced in rhetoric, and deal with destructive consequences later. It's almost as if it’s not the cause that matters but the emotional states that come with it. All is fuelled by the digital realm abetted by noise, opinion and media reporting pretending to be knowledge.
This behaviour has various names (“mass groupthink”, “mass hypnosis”, “cult behaviour”). Whatever you call it, this perilous tendency is built-in to all group behaviour and increasingly exhibited in a modern interconnected world. Innate needs underlie this group behaviour, but we are largely ignorant of their presence and role as well.
If we are to lessen this dangerous trend, what is required is greater knowledge about it: what it is, how it comes about, and, above all, how to manage it better, as well as about what lies behind, innate needs. This knowledge exists and our aim is to disseminate it as broadly as possible.
The Courses
Purchasers will receive links to two pre-recorded workshops (formerly live Zoom courses), each running 2 hours and 30 minutes in length. They include the following:
COURSE 1: MASS GROUPTHINK AND POLARIZATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE – What is ‘mass groupthink’? What are its psychological drivers and societal causes? How does it function? Where and how do we see mass groupthink operating? What are its consequences?
COURSE 2: MOVING BEYOND MASS GROUPTHINK – How can we build immunity against mass groupthink tendencies, both as individuals and as collectives? How can we recognize the signs of its approach? What do should we do when a mass groupthink event takes place?
Learn with us how to take our political behaviour up a notch, diminish the polarizing effects of mass groupthink in crises, including by understanding innate needs better, and bring some humanity back into politics: an essential step today if we are to have any hope of navigating the chaos around us.
Those who enrol will receive a downloadable document with two VIMEO links to both pre-recorded courses.
Course Leaders
Ivan Tyrrell
Conciliators Guild Director of Strategy, Human Givens College founder and author.
John Bell
Conciliators Guild Director, diplomat and mediator.
John Zada
Conciliators Guild Director of Communications, journalist and author.