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Many people find it puzzling that groups of people sometimes engage in behavior that seems to be clearly dangerous or, at
least, ill-conceived.
Q. For that reason, when the leader exhibits a preference for a specific solution to the crisis, the other
members may choose to ignore any other alternatives.
R. The resulting lack of balanced judgment—groupthink—may well cause the group to reach a decision
that in retrospect is obviously wrong.
S. Individual members of the group prize the high morale derived from its cohesion and fear rejection
if they break ranks.
T. Irving Janis developed the “groupthink” hypothesis in 1972 in an attempt to explain how fatal errors
can occur in a group’s decision making.
U. According to this hypothesis, groupthink can arise when a highly cohesive group with a strong-
willed leader faces a crisis.
6.
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In spite of a recent revival of interest in nineteenth-century women writers, Lydia Maria Child remains an obscure name.
Q. Child’s writing was, by contrast, politically passionate; she devoted her literary energies to
vindicating the rights of women, Indians, and African American slaves.
R. The most likely explanation for this oversight is that she cannot be classified with her female
contemporaries, who mainly produced stylized domestic fiction.
S. Our gain, though, would not compensate for the fact that her voice was not sufficiently heard when it
would have been most relevant.
T. So powerful was her voice, in fact, that the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison hailed her as “first
woman in the Republic.”
U. His endorsement leaves no room for doubt that the modern reader should be made aware of her
work.
7.
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The famous economist Adam Smith was notorious for his absent-mindedness and tendency to enter strange fits of distraction.
Q. When the spell was broken, he stopped and took up the conversation where he had left off, not
realizing he had done anything out of the ordinary.
R. On one occasion, Smith was walking in Edinburgh with a friend when a guard presented his pike in
8.
