Irving Lester Janis (May 26, 1918 – November 15, 1990) was an American research

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the pre ...

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

and a professor emeritus at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

most famous for his theory of "

groupthink Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness ...

" which described the systematic errors made by groups when making collective decisions. A '' Review of General Psychology'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Janis as the 79th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Early years

Irving Janis was born on May 26, 1918, in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...

. He received a bachelor of science degree from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1939, then received a doctorate from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Career

During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, Janis was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he carried out studies of military morale. In 1947, Janis became a faculty member of the

Psychology Department, where he remained for nearly forty years. He collaborated with

Carl Hovland Carl Iver Hovland (June 12, 1912 – April 16, 1961) was a psychologist working primarily at Yale University and for the US Army during World War II who studied attitude change and persuasion. He first reported the sleeper effect after studying ...

on his studies of

attitude Attitude may refer to: Philosophy and psychology * Attitude (psychology), an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value * Metaphysics of presence * Propositional attitude, a relational mental state connecting a person to a propo ...

change, including the sleeper effect. During his career, Janis studied decisionmaking in areas such as dieting and smoking. This work described how people respond to threats, as well as what conditions give rise to irrational complacency, apathy, hopelessness, rigidity, and panic. Janis also made important contributions to the study of group dynamics. He did extensive work in the area of "

," which describes the tendency of groups to try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without sufficiently testing, analyzing, and evaluating their ideas. His work suggested that pressures for conformity restrict the thinking of the group, bias its analysis, promote simplistic and stereotyped thinking, and stifle individual creative and independent thought. Janis wrote or co-wrote more than a dozen books, including ''Psychological Stress'' (1958), ''Victims of Groupthink'' (1972), ''Decision Making'' (1977), ''Groupthink'' (1982), and ''Crucial Decisions'' (1989). In 1967, Janis was awarded the Socio-Psychological Prize by the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

.History & Archives: AAAS Prize for Behavioral Science Research
/ref> In 1981, he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association. In 1991, he won the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. He retired from Yale University in 1985, and in 1986 was appointed Adjunct Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.

Personal life

Janis was married to Marjorie Janis, with whom he had two daughters. He died of lung cancer on November 15, 1990, in

Santa Rosa, California Santa Rosa ( Spanish for " Saint Rose") is a city and the county seat of Sonoma County, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California. Its estimated 2019 population was 178,127. It is the largest city in California's Wine Country and ...

Selected books

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Janis, Irving 1918 births 1990 deaths University of Chicago alumni Teachers College, Columbia University alumni 20th-century American psychologists American psychology writers American male non-fiction writers Conformity Social psychologists Jewish psychologists Deaths from lung cancer University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Communication scholars 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers United States Army personnel of World War I