By Mira Sucharov, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
In my course on graphic novels and political identity, I often like to open a class session by asking students whether they “liked” the book on offer that week. As an opener, it’s a softball question that can help put at ease students who might otherwise be hesitant to speak publicly.
And in terms of content, as psychiatrists charged with assessing things like personality disorders know, the question of “likeability” can reveal much about the object. In other words, a reader’s subjective response to an artistic work may help tease out aspects of that work that are worth discussing in more depth. Did the author manage to connect emotionally and intellectually with the reader? Did the reader feel challenged by new themes and ideas?
But as I learned recently, there are pitfalls to this approach: namely, a groupthink dynamic can result. As scholars of small group dynamics have found, particularly in times of stress (and for some, a university seminar can be stressful!), apparent public agreement can provide a sense of psychological comfort. In turn, groupthink closes off the kind of debate so crucial for university seminars to succeed. Being more personal, discussing a subjective sense of something can serve to intensify the groupthink dynamic, particularly among students who are often not much older than teens — the stage of life where uniform preferences are a powerful social pull.
This dynamic became apparent in a recent class of mine one day where, in response to my did-you-like-it question, many students expressed deep dislike of the book on offer. Students said it was pretentious, hard to get through, too self-conscious, too wordy, too many literary references sprinkled through the text, and so on. But a conversation a few weeks later revealed to me that at least one student really did like the book. And once the conversation flowed towards the dislike option, that student stayed mum: exactly the opposite result I was aiming for in helping to elicit broad student participation.
Now I either save the “like” question for the end of a given class, after we’ve discussed the work, or I don’t ask it at all. It means that I have one less option for a non-intimidating conversation opener, and we now tend to dive right into more substantive questions around content and themes — but groupthink is hopefully avoided.