Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Benabou, Roland
• 署名单位: Princeton University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rds030
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 429-462
• 关键词: ceo overconfidence; INFORMATION; beliefs; MODEL; anticipation; confidence; PSYCHOLOGY; BUSINESS; utility

摘要

This article investigates collective denial and willful blindness in groups, organizations, and markets. Agents with anticipatory preferences, linked through an interaction structure, choose how to interpret and recall public signals about future prospects. Wishful thinking (denial of bad news) is shown to be contagious when it is harmful to others, and self-limiting when it is beneficial. Similarly, with Kreps-Porteus preferences, willful blindness (information avoidance) spreads when it increases the risks borne by others. This general mechanism can generate multiple social cognitions of reality, and in hierarchies it implies that realism and delusion will trickle down from the leaders. The welfare analysis differentiates group morale from groupthink and identifies a fundamental tension in organizations' attitudes towards dissent. Contagious exuberance can also seize asset markets, generating investment frenzies and crashes.