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What causes groupthink? High social cohesion without exposure to outside members & ideas (say like in a private group for cisgender writers who exclude transgender people); homogeneity - e.g. lacking balanced leadership or methodological rigour (like excluding transpeople)... 6/
...and external threats, such as difficulties in decision-making or moral crises (e.g. cigender writers feeling anxious that transpeople are slightly more visible). A group that excludes transpeople but frets about their perceived encroaching power suffers from groupthink. 7/
Groupthink applies to homogenous orgs & memberships. Janis examined decision-making by the Army. This #BehaviouralScience term is NOT meant to be applied to heterogenous groups like transgender people, who come from multiple ethnic, racial, disabled & other social groups. 8/
Transgender people's critiques of transphobic writing is NOT groupthink.* The private group in the Jezebel article IS groupthink, because influential cisgender writers reinforce one another's transphobic beliefs, use this to justify exclusion in the group, & externally. 9/
Let's come back to mindguards. These are group members who take it upon themselves to gatekeep information. Singal is an example. He uses his media platforms to spread a biased view of transgender people even though he's not an expert on transgender or other gender research. 10/
Singal has a long history of transphobic reporting. He has shown up on my threads before, even though he's not tagged, not the subject of the discussion, and where I - as a sociologist of gender - have discussed methodological/theoretical problems with transphobic articles. 11/
Mindguards see it's their personal quest to filter info that contradicts group values; to limit informed discussion; & narrow possible solutions for decision-making. Writing articles to infect parents with doubt about their transgender children is the function of a mindguard. 12/
It's irresponsible to use #SocialScience research to discredit the lived experiences of marginalised groups. Conservative writers poach #BehaviouralScience ideas to serve their interests. Influential writers cocooning themselves from critical thinking is bad for the public. 13/
To end, journalists, academics & writers must stop normalising transphobia & misusing #SocialScience to reinforce exclusion of minorities. They retreat into private groups b/c they know this is inexcusable, but this has broad consequences as they control information flows. 14/
*NB. (If there are homogenous transgender organisations making decisions - e.g. all White, or all able-bodied ignoring input from minority transgender people, which there are - then we might use groupthink to examine their choices. This is a separate but important issue.) 15/fin
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