The UK Post Office scandal has been in the news recently after a recent poignant television drama, even though the scandal affected hundreds of staff in the 2000s until 2015—showing the power of media psychology and the influence of newspapers, television and other venues on public opinion [1].
The UK Post Office was a government-owned enterprise and the affected staff, called postmasters, worked in branches which they led. The scandal began when software used by the Post Office, called Horizon and supplied by Fujitsu, started causing problems. Postmasters would notice that their stores’ account balances would bizarrely change, sometimes right before their very eyes, creating financial deficits which did not actually exist but for which they were blamed. Group polarization and groupthink among senior managers in Post Office headquarters meant that they did not entertain the possibility that the software was faulty. Instead, they became more and more convinced that the postmasters were guilty even when presented with evidence to the contrary—a classic case of groupthink. This is a psychological phenomenon noted by Irving Janis [2] and involves the refusal among some groups to consider alternative opinions, covering-up information which contradicts the group’s opinion, and so on.
The postmasters would often phone the Post Office helpline to tell them about the computer problems, but the helpline staff would tell each postmaster that they were the only ones suffering from that problem. That kind of dishonesty was likely sanctioned by staff more senior than the helpline employees, and rationalised from the lens of groupthink. What made matters worse was that senior Post Office staff enjoyed high salaries which they might have feared would be affected by the discovery that software they had championed was faulty.
The Post Office headquarters blamed the postmasters for the account deficits and forced them to pay thousands of pounds, often leading to postmasters losing their homes or going bankrupt. Some committed suicide, and many lost their jobs. Despite the number of staff affected, all experiencing the same bizarre phenomenon of inexplicable financial deficits, the Post Office chose not to believe them. They prosecuted some, sent many to prison, and left many with criminal records. That was where the phenomena at work went beyond groupthink as a social psychological phenomenon, into behaviour and attitudes redolent of psychopathy through their lack of empathy and seeming enjoyment about punishing potentially innocent postmasters.
The truly bizarre question is why the Post Office did not engage in basic accounting, which looks at income and outgoings, and counts whether there was actually a financial deficit, and if so, where from. That would be unsurprising in a laboratory experiment, because studies have found that many people rely on biased information when they are asked to make group decisions, often relying on shared information (e.g., the opinion that the postmasters were guilty) rather than unshared information (e.g., delving into the truth through basic accounting) [3]. Instead, the Post Office chose to believe that the Horizon software was infallible, another classic sign of groupthink in which people believe that they are morally superior.
Later on, the Post Office started discovering that they were actually wrong, and that the Horizon software could actually be accessed remotely by Fujitsu staff, but senior staff chose to ignore that information and instead engage in coverups. Again, this is where psychologists must ask questions about whether the phenomena at work went beyond social psychology.
In the meantime, one heroic postmaster called Alan Bates—in the early 2000s at the initial stages of the Horizon software problems—refused to sign his account balances because he insisted that they were wrong. He insisted that the financial deficits were caused by the software but the Post Office prosecutors chose not to believe him, taking his store away from him. He moved away and eventually started a campaign by organising meetings with affected postmasters and, eventually, justice began to happen.
However, even nine years on, many postmasters remained unexonerated. That was until a recent television drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, sparked the interest of the media, government and the public. The collective outcry has propelled the prospect of justice for the victims forward, but the question remains: Why did the Post Office senior managers behave so immorally, and why did they not care enough for the postmasters to honestly admit to faults with the Horizon software?
The media helped raise the issue into the public sphere, as did the campaign organised by Bates, leading to changes in UK law which will exonerate postmasters convicted during the scandal and compensation for those affected. However, questions remain about why the Post Office was allowed to get away for so long. What happened reminds psychologists of groupthink, group polarization and other phenomena—but at a level which transcends social psychology, and leaps into the bounds of potential psychopathy. Were they deluded? Were they toxic? Or were they evil? These questions are very important for psychologists wishing to understand why employees in organizations cover up scandals, bullies, and other types of toxic behaviours in the workplace.
References
[1] Berry, D. and Kamau, C. (2013) Public Policy and Media Organizations. Routledge
[2] Janis, I. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Cengage Learning.
[3] Schulz-Hardt, S., Frey, D., Lüthgens, C., & Moscovici, S. (2000). Biased information search in group decision making. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 655-669. http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.4.655
Corporate Psychopathy and the Post Office Scandal
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17.01.2024
The UK Post Office scandal has been in the news recently after a recent poignant television drama, even though the scandal affected hundreds of staff in the 2000s until 2015—showing the power of media psychology and the influence of newspapers, television and other venues on public opinion [1].
The UK Post Office was a government-owned enterprise and the affected staff, called postmasters, worked in branches which they led. The scandal began when software used by the Post Office, called Horizon and supplied by Fujitsu, started causing problems. Postmasters would notice that their stores’ account balances would bizarrely change, sometimes right before their very eyes, creating financial deficits which did not actually exist but for which they were blamed. Group polarization and groupthink among senior managers in Post Office headquarters meant that they did not entertain the possibility that the software was faulty. Instead, they became more and more convinced that the postmasters were guilty even when presented with evidence to the contrary—a classic case of groupthink. This is a psychological phenomenon noted by Irving Janis [2] and involves the refusal among some groups to consider alternative opinions, covering-up information which contradicts the group’s opinion, and so on.
The postmasters would often phone the Post Office helpline to tell them about the computer problems, but the helpline staff would tell each postmaster that they were........
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