The Vietnam war which led to the loss of many American and Vietnamese lives because of extreme cohesiveness is an example of -
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Group think
Option (1) Social loafing — Incorrect. Social loafing is a reduction in individual effort when working on a collective task, as in a tug-of-war. It is about slack effort, not about a cohesive group making a disastrous decision.
Option (2) Team work — Incorrect. Teamwork in groups generally leads to beneficial results; members with complementary skills work for a common goal. The question describes a decision that turned into a fiasco.
Option (3) Group think — Correct. Irving Janis found that cohesion can lead to disastrous decisions through groupthink, which is a consequence of extreme cohesiveness: no one voices doubts, and the group ignores warnings from the real world. The Vietnam War is an example: from 1964 to 1967 the U.S. escalated the war despite warnings, and the move cost 56,000 American and more than one million Vietnamese lives.
Option (4) Social facilitation — Incorrect. Social facilitation is the better performance of a person in the presence of others, because their presence leads to arousal. It concerns an individual’s performance, not a group decision.
NCERT (2025-26): “Nature and Formation of Groups … Extreme cohesiveness however, may sometimes not be in a group’s interest. Psychologists have identified the phenomenon of groupthink (see Box 7.1) which is a consequence of extreme cohesiveness.” “Social Loafing … It has been found that individuals work less hard in a group than they do when performing alone. This points to a phenomenon referred to as ‘social loafing’. Social loafing is a reduction in individual effort when working on a collective task, i.e. one in which outputs are pooled with those of other group members.…” “…Social facilitation research suggests that presence of others leads to arousal and can motivate individuals to enhance their performance if they are already good at solving something.…”
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