Some symptoms of ‘groupthink’:

u	Shared overoptimism and excessive risk-taking by most or all group members;
u	Collective discounting of warnings and “rationalizing away” of inconvenient or contradictory information – decision-makers feed off each other’s certainty of their mutual good judgement;
u	Stereotyping of opponents and adversaries, with group members seeing adversaries as too untrustworthy for negotiation or too stupid to pose a significant threat, and opponents or critics as too foolish or ill-informed for their alternative viewpoints to be taken seriously;
u	Pressuring or bullying (subtle and otherwise) of any group members showing signs of dissent;
u	Self-censoring by group members of misgivings about or conflicts with the seeming group consensus;
u	Emergence of self-appointed ‘gatekeepers’ to ‘protect’ the group from information and considerations which might challenge the group’s “decision posture”.

‘Correctives’ for or tacks to lessen groupthink include:

n	making strenuous efforts to seek information from a variety of sources outside the group;
n	of such outside sources, these should especially involve the presence of or contributions from people expected to disagree with the group;
n	there should be a thorough and fair-minded questioning of these outside parties and sources;
	and
n	there should be at least one group member assigned as Devil’s advocate to full-bloodedly advance the best available arguments against the group’s preferred position or the course-of-action favoured, and whose offerings might provoke other group members to “dig deeper” and think more carefully about the issues, proposals, and alternatives which ought to be considered.