What Leads to Groupthink?

When the Desire for Belonging Creates Harm

Unconscious motives led me to costly choices. It was after my overnight move in sixth grade from Germany to Los Angeles where I discovered that belonging was out of reach. (Click the link for the story https://lifeafterwhy.com/blog/what-to-do-with-the-chaos-of-this-moment.) In the summer after that wrenching experience, we moved again to a nearby city. Another start from scratch. In my hurt and rejection, I resolved to fit in, to never experience the humiliation of being an outcast. How? Excel at academics? Join a sports team? Run for student government? No; I decided to be popular. How was popularity achieved at Van Nuys Junior High School? By joining the “bad” group, a cohort of preteen rebellion known for foolish choices and risky behaviors. Paulette, whom kids secretly disliked but followed because she wielded social power, was my ticket into the group. I did things I would regret for years, even decades, but I belonged, at least for a while, until one summer day before high school when Paulette turned my friends against me in one hour. She led a ransacking of my home while I was there alone. I ended up getting the very thing I set out to avoid, being ostracized.

The fear of being ostracized is one of the deepest value-distorting human drives. As a high school teacher, I regularly saw students give in to the pressure not to “rat” because they didn’t want to be ostracized. Their focus shifted from the actual wrong to the greater violation of disturbing group cohesion. Students who ratted were vilified and cast out, creating fear of reprisal. Adults succumb to the same pressure. An AP article points out that Minneapolis had a “duty to intervene” policy to stop the use of unreasonable force, but “such rules will always run up against entrenched police culture and the fear of being ostracized and branded a ‘rat.’ In law enforcement, if you’re considered an individual who can’t be trusted, you’re not going to have the timely back-up from other officers,” which causes fear. “The costs are high in law enforcement, even life and death consequences for ratting” (Condon, Bernard and Richmond, Todd. “Duty to intervene: Floyd cops spoke up but didn’t step in,” 7 June 2020, https://apnews.com/0d52f8accbbdab6a29b781d75e9aeb01). The addition of a power differential and inexperience between Derek Chauvin and at least two of the officers—rookies on the fourth day of duty—compounded the problem.

There’s an unconscious choice people make to be on the inside that precedes complicity. Several years ago, my friend Pam sent me a timely—and timeless—essay by C.S. Lewis weeks before I was rattled by a job demotion. It became a pillar of my life. Lewis’s own words—excerpted below— make the case for the allure of the “Inner Ring.”

In the army—and every institution or social group—there are two systems, “one is printed in some little red book and anyone can easily read it up. The other is not printed anywhere. You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it.

There are what correspond to passwords, but they are too spontaneous and informal. A particular slang, the use of particular nicknames, an allusive manner of conversation, are the marks. But it is not so constant. It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the borderline.

There are no formal admissions or expulsions. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. From inside it …may be called ‘You and Tony and me.’ When it is very secure and comparatively stable in membership it calls itself ‘we.’ When it has to be expanded to meet a particular emergency it calls itself ‘all the sensible people at this place.’ From outside, if you have despaired of getting into it, you call it ‘That gang’ or ‘they’ or ‘So-and-so and his set’ or ‘The Caucus’ or ‘The Inner Ring.’”

Lewis argues that the desire for the inner ring “is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it…Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care.

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.”

The Inner Ring isn’t evil in itself but it “is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow…you will find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.” (Lewis, C.S. “The Inner Ring.” C.S. Lewis Society of California, https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/.)

Those who break the quest for the Inner Ring find true community; those who don’t can be broken by it. The words “when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world” chill me. If the officers had only been wise enough to thrust back to cup, they may have acted decisively to do the right thing.

We, of course, observing from a safe distance, are quick to condemn. But what do we do when the cup is near our lips?