Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol

Success only exacerbates this tendency toward conformity. It drives overconfidence in the status quo, which in turn stifles dissent, precisely when dissent is most needed to prevent complacency. “Minority viewpoints are important,” writes Berkeley psychologist Charlan Nemeth, a leading expert on groupthink, “not because they tend to prevail but because they stimulate divergent attention and thought.”70 Even when minority opinions are wrong, “they contribute to the detection of novel solutions and decisions that, on balance, are qualitatively better.” In other words, dissenters force us to look beyond the dominant position, which tends to be the most obvious one.