The Unanimous Committee and the Corridor Nobody Stopped
A II PUC college with 60 students in the Commerce section forms a 12-member annual-day committee; 45 students volunteer. In the first meeting four senior students dominate; a proposal to spend ₹40,000 on decoration - about two-thirds of the collection - is pushed by one of them. No vote is taken and nobody objects openly, though three members later say privately that they thought it wasteful and assumed others had checked the budget. After the event several members describe it as 'a unanimous decision'. In the same week, in the corridor, a group of 15 students watch two seniors mock a I PUC boy's accent for several minutes; no one intervenes; later one says 'I thought someone else would have told a teacher'.
1. Explain the committee's decision using two social-psychology concepts, and propose two procedural changes with reasons.
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Conformity and pluralistic ignorance. No one objected, and each member read the silence of the others as agreement, although three privately disagreed - the Asch situation, where an apparently unanimous majority suppresses dissent. The dominant seniors supplied that apparent majority.
Groupthink. The group is cohesive, has a directive leader-figure, takes no vote, and afterwards reconstructs the outcome as unanimous: the illusion of unanimity and self-censorship Janis described. The absence of a ballot is the mechanism - silence becomes consent by default.
Procedural changes:
- Anonymous written ballot, preceded by the treasurer reading out the actual collection figure. Secret voting removes the cost of public dissent and blocks the reconstruction of silence as agreement.
- Rotating devil's advocate plus a round in which every member must speak once, or first discuss in pairs. This breaks the majority's immediate presence and forces the information the three silent members held about the budget into the open.
Note also that 12 members with four speakers is a participation problem, and pooled, unidentifiable contributions make social loafing likely in the work that follows.
2. Explain the corridor inaction. Distinguish the concepts involved and say what would actually change the outcome.
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This is bystander apathy, produced by diffusion of responsibility: with 15 onlookers, each person's felt share of responsibility shrinks, and each reasons 'someone else will act'.
Two further mechanisms are distinct and should not be conflated:
- Pluralistic ignorance (informational influence) - no one is reacting, so each reads the situation as 'not serious'; other people's calm faces are taken as evidence about the event.
- Audience inhibition (evaluation apprehension) - intervening makes you visible and possibly the next target, so the cost of acting rises in front of an audience.
The important inference is situational, not dispositional: these are probably not cruel students, and many would help if alone. That is why moral exhortation fails.
What changes the outcome: make the request specific and individual ('You, in the blue shirt - take him to the staff room'), which removes diffusion; and establish a standing, known rule that the nearest senior reports and names the incident, which removes ambiguity. A named person and a known procedure do more than any appeal to 'be brave'.
3. Forty-five students volunteered but the committee work was carried by a few. Explain why, and outline what you would do about it.
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Volunteering signals intent, not effort. Three mechanisms explain the gap:
Social loafing. In a 12-person committee the link between any individual's contribution and the visible outcome is weak, so effort can drop without detection. Loafing rises with group size, especially when contributions are pooled and unidentifiable.
Diffusion of responsibility extends from emergencies to ordinary work: 'someone else will do the budget'.
Free riding becomes rational once the event will happen anyway.
What reduces it:
- Make contributions identifiable: named sub-tasks with dates on a shared sheet, and minutes recording who agreed to what. Identifiability is the single most reliable antidote to loafing.
- Keep subgroups of 3–4 with a named convenor, because smaller groups raise individual visibility.
- Set a clear, accepted goal (collection target, decoration budget) rather than a vague one; specific goals with feedback raise effort.
- Give each member a distinct role with a visible output, and review the process, not only the event.
For the 33 not selected, offer short, time-bounded tasks; an open 'help if you can' appeal is the classic route to diffusion.