Behaviour File 03 · The research behind Artificial Harmony
A room full of clever people, all agreeing.
Updated 5 October 2026
In 1961, a small group of very capable advisers agreed to the Bay of Pigs invasion. The psychologist Irving Janis later used it to explain how clever groups make poor decisions.
His name for it was groupthink: the wish to agree overriding the motivation to decide well.
Janis described symptoms such as self-censorship and an illusion of unanimity, often in close-knit groups with a strong leader.
Decades later, Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety in work teams looked at the other side: what it takes for people to feel able to speak up.
Both bodies of research sit behind a pattern in the KOZMO model called Artificial Harmony.
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Sources: Janis, Groupthink (1982), as summarised in Gross, Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour; Edmondson (1999), Administrative Science Quarterly 44(2).