Cascade Exercise Case Study

1) Identify three course concepts and explain how they relate to the Cascade exercise?
The Cascade experiential exercise required a group of people to come together in a fictional circumstance and decide what types of items are instrumental to their survival. The first concept that relates to the Cascade exercise is groupthink. Groupthink is a phenomenon where group pressure to conform to a group’s consensus overrides the group’s ability to critically appraise unpopular or alternative courses of action. If most of your group members believe a piece of equipment is not useful and you on the other hand believe it is vital to your survival groupthink might take over. An individual would conform to the group’s way of thinking, as group pressure

This is related to the exercise when your group has finished ranking the items. Instead of going over the items and discussing pros and cons you go over how beneficial the things in the top 5 are and how unsuitable the items in our lower half are. You don’t seek out alternatives instead the group members would reaffirm each others support for the item thinking of new ways the item could be implemented rather then talk about how the item is flawed. The last concept that we can relate to in the Cascade experience is groupshift. Groupshift is a phenomenon where the initial position of a group member tends to be a more extreme version of the group’s position and when the group picks up this idea they do not discard it rather move towards it and therefore cause the group to have an extreme version of the group’s initial position. This can happen in the cascade exercise when discussing item ranking as a group. One group member can make an argument for a rather useless device that can become under extreme circumstances a key in survival. At first we look at the item as highly circumstantial and useless when it comes to surviving the elements. However, as the member of the group starts adding