RTV#41 The Devil's Advocate

A Year of Raising the Village. Week #41 – The Devil's Advocate

For nearly 4 centuries, when an individual became a candidate for sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church, decision makers relied on the Advocatus Diaboli, or devil's advocate, to investigate all the negative aspects of the candidate's life and their work. The idea was that with a thorough investigation that uncovered all the unfavorable information for the Church leadership, the decision making process would be better informed.


A lone dissenter in an otherwise unanimous group may be enough to generate more creative and complex thinking within the entire group. The question is - are devil's advocates (essentially pretend dissenters) just as effective? Authors of the book Yes! - Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, share that there is conflicting evidence about how helpful the devil's advocate approach is.

On one hand, studies showed that a real dissenter is more persuasive as the group sees the arguments as more valid than the devil's advocate.   With a real dissenter, the group searches to understand what makes the dissenter believe what they believe in order to broaden their perspective.

At the same time, other findings support that experience with devil's advocates also strengthen confidence in decisions because the group believes that they have considered, and subsequently dismissed, all possible alternatives. In addition, practicing with a devil's advocate may help a group's climate to become more open where opposing views are accepted so that the safety for true dissenters is higher and they speak up.

Village Raising Question

What do you think? What has your experience been with using devil's advocates in a group decision making process?


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