The Penn State Scandal is one that will go down in history for having misconceptions, lies being thrown around, and overall a very bad situation for the reputation of Penn State University. Groupthink could relate to this scandal because the men who either lied to authorities, covered up aspects of the situation, or denied everything that the press said, were partaking in groupthink. Groupthink is the idea that if groups get too confident that they will begin to start making poor decisions as a group. The men who lied and denied accusations did not want to break the cohesive bonds between Jerry Sandusky and themselves.
There are many factors that play into groupthink. The first is an illusion of invulnerability. This factor plays part in that the group thinks they are the best group and nothing could ever bring them down. This seems to obviously be false in this situation because they were caught in the act of lying. Another factor of groupthink is belief in the group's own morality. Group members think that their actions and beliefs are better than people from outside of the group. The third factor is the tendency to hold shared stereotypes. Group members often will take a "us versus them" mentality to make ones group seem better. Looking at these three factors alone, the people who had a pivotal role in the Penn State Scandal thought that their group was better and stronger than the press. Sandusky's team of lawyers and co-employees were wrong in that they thought that they could fool the press and the judicial court about the scandal.
The men that tried to help Sandusky eventually ended up getting caught of fraud and lying to authorities. These men should think next time before they talk just because they are close with all of their group members.
