Opinion | Global protests are the result of years of neglect as deluded elite remain blind to realities
- The pandemic, war, inflation and livelihood losses have left many around the world feeling desperate
- For too long, those feelings have been overlooked by those in power, who prefer to stick to their own mandates
As protests erupt in China, Iran, Brazil and Europe, social scientists will have a field day dissecting why.
The economist/psychologist Daniel Kahneman asked: why are we blind to our blindness? That can be attributed to cognitive biases, which lead one party (for example, the elite or top leadership) to completely misread what the rest are feeling or thinking. This happens irrespective of whether we live in democracies or autocracies.
Princeton economist Roland Bénabou has an excellent perspective on how “groupthink” within organisations and markets leads to collective blindness. The term “groupthink” was coined by social psychologist Irving Janis in his classic 1972 study of Bay of Pigs and Vietnam war failures, in which he surmised that groups delude themselves and then deny reality in the face of facts.
The symptoms identified are: (a) an illusion of invulnerability; (b) collective rationalisation; (c) belief in inherent morality; (d) stereotyped views of out-groups; (e) direct pressure on dissenters; (f) self-censorship; (g) illusion of unanimity; and (h) self-appointed mindguards.
Does that sound familiar, given what is happening right now? Bénabou extended Janis’ work to show how wishful thinking and reality denial spread through organisations and markets. Applying the principle of “mutually assured delusion”, groups reinforce each other’s biases and either end up with market manias or market crashes.
