Pensamiento de grupo (groupthink en inglés) es una expresión acuñada por el psicólogo Irving Janis en 1972 para describir el proceso por el cual un grupo puede tomar decisiones malas o irracionales. En una situación de pensamiento en grupo, cada miembro del grupo intenta conformar su opinión a la que creen que es el consenso del grupo. Esto parece ser una manera muy racional de afrontar la situación. Sin embargo, resulta en una situación en la cual el grupo en definitiva se pone de acuerdo en determinada acción que cada miembro individualmente considera desaconsejable. La definición original de Janis era: «Un modo de pensamiento que las personas adoptan cuando están profundamente involucradas en un grupo cohesivo, cuando los esfuerzos de los miembros por unanimidad hacen caso omiso de su motivación para valorar realísticamente cursos de acción alternativos». Janis acuñó groupthink en analogía de doublethink y otras palabras similares de neolengua, lenguaje ficticio creado por George Orwell en su novela distópica 1984. Dado intencionalmente ese contexto negativo, la idea es recalcar sus efectos perjudiciales en la eficiencia mental, la evaluación de la realidad y los juicios morales como resultado de la presión de grupo. El pensamiento de grupo tiende a ocurrir en comités y en grandes organizaciones. Janis originalmente estudió el bombardeo a Pearl Harbor, la guerra de Vietnam y la invasión de Bahía de Cochinos.

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Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences. Groupthink requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the "ingroup" produces an "illusion of invulnerability" (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the "ingroup" significantly overrates its own abilities in decision-making and significantly underrates the abilities of its opponents (the "outgroup"). Furthermore, groupthink can produce dehumanizing actions against the "outgroup". Antecedent factors such as group cohesiveness, faulty group structure, and situational context (e.g., community panic) play into the likelihood of whether or not groupthink will impact the decision-making process. Groupthink is a construct of social psychology but has an extensive reach and influences literature in the fields of communication studies, political science, management, and organizational theory, as well as important aspects of deviant religious cult behaviour. Groupthink is sometimes stated to occur (more broadly) within natural groups within the community, for example to explain the lifelong different mindsets of conservatives versus liberals, or the solitary nature of introverts. However, this conformity of viewpoints within a group does not mainly involve deliberate group decision-making, and might be better explained by the collective confirmation bias of the individual members of the group. Most of the initial research on groupthink was conducted by Irving Janis, a research psychologist from Yale University. Janis published an influential book in 1972, which was revised in 1982. Janis used the Bay of Pigs disaster (the failed invasion of Castro's Cuba in 1961) and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as his two prime case studies. have evaluated and reformulated his groupthink model.

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