Word for the Wise

April 17, 2006 Broadcast

Topic: Groupthink

Forty-five years ago today, 1,500 men attempted to land at two beaches on the Bahia de Cochinos—the Bay of Pigs—in Cuba. Their goal? To overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. The CIA-sponsored coup failed, much to the embarrassment of the Kennedy administration.

The fiasco—and the thousands of resulting deaths—are sometimes blamed on groupthink. All of us here at Word for the Wise have agreed not to engage in a political discussion about whether groupthink—meaning "a pattern of thought characterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics"—was in fact responsible, but we will look at the history of that word.

Although the psychological theory of groupthink is associated with Irving Janis, the word groupthink predates the social psychologist's influential 1972 work Victims of Groupthink: a psychological study of foreign policy by two full decades.

Groupthink was the title of a 1952 article written by sociologist William H. Whyte (who later wrote The Organization Man) and published in Fortune magazine. In his magazine piece, the sociologist defined groupthink as "rationalized conformity . . . [in which] group values are not only expedient . . . but right and good."

Think about joining the group that writes us regularly.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.