Ethnocentrism and Group Thinking
Ethnocentrism involves the values and ways of thinking that the culture or religion you belong to and applying them as being superior to those with different views. Not only does this apply to religious and cultural groups but can also be seen within organizations and businesses. Think about a company you have worked for in the past, where there certain narrow ways of thinking that everyone abided by and filtered into others in the organization? Just because your group is doing something one way does not make it right. The same can be said for the way you may perceive another group. This is evident within the IC community in the relationship between analysts and policy makers.
Analysts often see the policy makers as a burden, always pushing them for certain intel, and never seem to listen when they produce even the most accurate information. Even then, if it is not what the consumer necessarily "wants", they can face reproductions. On the other hand, policy makers often think they know everything already and will sometimes dismiss the intelligence delivered to them all together because they view the information as inferior to their own knowledge or research conducted.
Imagine how this effects new analysts joining the IC. They come in to a environment where people tell them that these policy makers don't even know what they are doing and just want to push their personal agenda. While this may be true, the group thinking within the organization will cause new employees to apply this to all policy makers in the future. The same can be said for decision makers in voicing their concerns about analysts not being smart enough to deliver reliable intelligence. This creates a trickle down effect where nobody is truly working together and thus decisions made and intelligence gathered ends up being flawed.