ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES
Vol. 73, Nos. 2/3, February/March, pp. 352–361, 1998
ARTICLE NO. OB982766
Groupthink, Bay of Pigs, and Watergate
Reconsidered
Bertram H. Raven
University of California, Los Angeles
Irving Janis’s concept of groupthink can be seen in the context
of our on-again–off-again love affair with groups. Group decisions
have often been seen as offering the benefits of collective wisdom,
but may also lead to disastrous consequences. Groupthink then
focuses on the negative effects of erroneous group decisions. Two
major examples of groupthink are reexamined and compared:
the disastrous Bay of Pigs decision by the elite advisory group of
President Kennedy, and the advisory groups of President Nixon,
which led to the Watergate disaster and at unsuccessful attempts
to cover up. In both, it is suggested there was a “runaway norm,”
escalation and polarization with the norm being to exceed other
members of the group in taking more extreme and unrestrained
actions against an “enemy.” While Janis seems to suggest that
groupthink will ultimately lead the group to fail in its ultimate
endeavors, we need to consider the frightening possibility that
in the case of the Nixon group, the group actions came close to
being successful. q 1998 Academic Press
OUR OFF-AGAIN–ON-AGAIN LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE GROUP
The period following World War II was one of great optimism, with expectations of positive change throughout the world. As the result of experiences
during the war, social psychology benefited especially, and indeed the immediate postwar period led to a golden period in growth of educational programs
and research support. One aspect of this period was an on-again–off-again love
affair with groups and social influence processes. In social psychology, the term
“group dynamics,” popularized by Kurt Lewin and his colleagues, became a
catchword which quickly spread to the population at large. The importance of
Address reprint requests and correspondence concerning this article to Bertram H. Raven,
Department of Psychology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563. E-mail: raven@ucla.edu.
0749-5978/98 $25.00
Copyright q 1998 by Academic Press
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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group cooperation and group decisions in productivity and effective problemsolving became an important topic of study and application (Lewin, 1947, 1952).
In order to implement change in working conditions, group discussion and
participation was demonstrated in theory, research, and application (Coch &
French, 1948). However yet, at the same time, we saw others who questioned
and even ridiculed the emphasis on groups and committees. The group discussion and group decision studies, which showed how group norms could contribute to greater productivity, were attacked as simply one more manipulative
device whereby management could get workers to work harder and longer
without an increase in pay (Gunderson, 1950). Groups and committees were
often seen as wasteful of time and often resulting in inferior products. C.
Northcote Parkinson (1957), with his clever tongue-in-cheek style, illustrated
how decisions by groups and committees effectively operated at their lowest
common denominator.1 The controversy continues even to this day. Moscovici
(1976) and his colleagues seem to see the group majority as stifling correct
creative solutions by the minority member, pointing out how a heroic minority
member can (and probably should) overcome the tyranny of the majority though
forceful independence. Paicheler (1988), following this same line, argues that
the entire emphasis on group decisions and conformity can be seen as a kind
of cultural conspiracy to maintain the status quo against social change. By
now the resolution parallels those which follow most such debates: groups can
be effective and can have much to contribute in terms of effective decisionmaking, greater productivity, higher morale, etc. However, they can also lead
to negative and wasteful results, and they can also be manipulated by those
who wish to use them for their own purposes. The practical issue boils down
to how we can benefit from their positive contributions while minimizing the
negative. That would seem to be the very issue that Janis examined in his
analysis of what he called groupthink.
THE POWER OF THE ERRONEOUS MAJORITY
I have often thought that the paradigm for what Janis later called the
groupthink phenomenon can be seen in a generally forgotten, simple experiment conducted by Norman Maier and Allen Solem (1952). They presented
their subjects with a simple problem: “A man bought a horse for $60 and sold
it for $70. Then he bought it back for $80 and sold it again for $90. How
much money did he make or lose in the horse business?” Subjects, when asked
individually, gave a variety of answers: losing $10, breaking even, or making
$10, $20, or $30.2 When the problem was presented to discussion groups of
1
I don’t know how many times I have heard a speaker, searching for a humorous introduction,
begin his/her presentation by saying that a camel was a horse designed by a committee. I always
laugh dutifully, along with the others, but later think, “Wait a minute. Considering the terrain
in which it operates, a camel is actually a quite well-designed horse.”
2
Of course, the correct answer is $20 profit—the man laid out a total of $140 and received a
total of $160. It is always surprising the number of intelligent subjects who don’t come out with
the correct answer.
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five or six, and a unanimous decision was required, the number of correct
answers rose somewhat, in comparison with the individual judgments. (Chalk
one up for the pro-group side?) However, this happened only when the majority
started out with a correct answer—if the majority held an incorrect answer,
then there was an even greater likelihood of group errors. (Anti-group?) However, the number of correct answers increased substantially even in those latter
groups, if there was a group leader who encouraged the expression of minority
opinions! In a later study, it was found that groups that reached a unanimous
decision were more satisfied than those which did not reach a unanimous
decision—and this was true even when the unanimous decision was incorrect!
(Thomas & Fink, 1961).
Despite our ambivalence toward groups, everyday wisdom would argue that
it is obvious that in solving complex problems which require a broad range of
information, a decision by several people would be superior to a decision by a
single person. If “two heads are better than one,” what about six, seven, or
eight heads? Further, suppose that the group is composed of very intelligent
and knowledgeable people; their collective wisdom should be all the better.
How then could one account for John F. Kennedy’s presidential advisory group,
composed of the “best and the brightest” (Halberstam, 1972), developing and
approving plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, frequently characterized
as one of the most militarily disastrous and morally disgraceful ventures in
American history. There were many who were bothered by this question, including leading members of the Kennedy team, and even President Kennedy
himself.
THE ROOTS OF GROUPTHINK
Irving Janis also thought about this curious phenomenon and suggested it
to his daughter, Charlotte, who was looking for a interesting topic for her
high school history term paper. As he reviewed her research, Janis became
increasingly obsessed and felt compelled to find some answers. For his explanations, he drew on tools with which he was familiar, he reviewed especially the
vast literature of theories and research on group behavior. His initial search
might have shown all sorts of theories and empirical evidence which would
have predicted what general wisdom would have suggested. After all, there is
plenty of evidence that groups perform better if they have high morale, high
cohesiveness, good leadership, high intelligence, excellent knowledge and experience, etc. Then, he also noted how factors which might ordinarily lead to
greater effectiveness could also in some circumstances lead to less effective
and even disastrous results. He did, in fact, note the very high morale and
cohesiveness in the Kennedy team, as the Democrats took control of the presidency after 8 years out of office. But he also was aware of studies which
indicated that groups tend to conform to a common norm when cohesiveness
and morale are high. In such cases, pressures on the deviant members of the
group can be tremendous. When the majority is wrong, that can obviously have
very deleterious effects. He would have been aware of findings, such as those
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reported by Muzafer Sherif et al. in the Robber’s Cave study (Sherif, Harvey,
White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961), which showed how a high level of morale could
lead to a sense of superiority toward the outgroup. The effects of group norms
on polarization and adoption of extreme, often maladaptive, decisions had been
demonstrated in various studies, including the research on group polarization
and the “risky shift” (e.g., Kogan & Wallach, 1967; Stoner, 1961; Teger & Pruitt,
1967). There is even evidence that group polarization will lead groups to take
more extreme positions in evaluating outgroups (Moscovici & Zavalloni, 1969).
Janis did not document most of these studies in either edition of Groupthink
(1972, 1982) [he does not even mention Maier and Solem (1952)], but we can
assume that he was aware of the basic findings. Further documentation is
provided in the very thorough review by Hart (1990) and by Esser (1998), Hart
(1998), and McCauley (1998) this issue.
THE IMPORTANCE OF GROUP COHESIVENESS
In their article in this issue, Sally Fuller and Ramon Aldag (1998) boldly
assume the role of devil’s advocate in criticizing the groupthink analysis offered
by Janis. How, they ask, can Janis say that high cohesiveness is the “critical
trigger in the groupthink phenomenon” when the “benefits of group cohesion
have long been recognized”? They rely on such arguments to say that Janis’s
theory is inherently inconsistent and empirically not supported. Perhaps the
analogy might be the benefits of various forms of fertilizer, which have contributed to human benefit by leading to bumper crops and better life for plants,
animals, and humans. When combined in certain combinations, with other
elements, they become the destructive force which can destroy all living things,
as in the Oklahoma bombing. We can all think of things which are generally
beneficial, but which in certain circumstances and in certain combinations can
become very destructive. So it is with group cohesiveness. The real genius,
then, lies in determining what these circumstances and combinations might
be which would lead to deleterious effects. Once one knows this, then recommendations can be made as to how effective leadership might operate to allow for
the beneficial effects of group cohesiveness while safeguarding against the its
stultifying effects in inhibiting expression of minority opinion and against the
unrealistic positive evaluation of one’s own group and the negative evaluation
of opposing groups.
GROUPTHINK IN WATERGATE AND ITS COVER-UP
Just as Janis became infatuated with the mystery of the Bay of Pigs decision
making process, several years later, like many of us, I found myself taken by
the advisory groups associated with President Nixon, who were involved in
the planning activities which resulted in the Watergate fiasco and the coverup afterward. The Nixon advisory group was also composed of very intelligent
and knowledgeable men (yes, again, they were all men). The phenomena which
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eventually led to the collapse of the Nixon administration were, of course, quite
different from those which led to the disaster at the Bay of Pigs. First of all,
the “enemy” was different. The Kennedy group had to deal with an external
enemy, with Fidel Castro and the government of Cuba. The Nixon group had
to deal with a domestic “enemy,” the so-called liberal establishment and more
specifically the Democratic party. Also, the activities of the Nixon people actually involved two sets of actions: (a) What have been called the “White House
horrors,” wherein the executive offices were involved, directly and indirectly,
in secret surveillance of opponents, use of the Internal Revenue Service and
various governmental agencies to punish the “enemies,” and use of burglaries
to gain destructive information (including the burglary of the offices of the
psychiatrist to scientist and peace activist Daniel Ellsburg, and the final bungling burglary of the Democratic Party Headquarters in the Watergate building)
and (b) the cover-up activities after the discovery of the White House horrors.
There were different planning and advisory groups involved in these two
decision-making processes.
I watched many hours of hearings on television, read many transcripts and
reports, and then drew on what I knew from the literature from social psychology and group dynamics. Much of what I read, then, led me to find Janis’s
groupthink theory helpful in my analysis—though I cited a number of other
theories as well (Raven, 1974). I, of course, felt highly complimented when the
second edition of groupthink was published and I found that Janis found my
analysis helpful in his updating his analysis of groupthink (Janis, 1982).
WAS THE “NIXON GROUP” COHESIVE?
Janis had emphasized the importance of group cohesiveness to the groupthink
process. Did high cohesiveness characterize the Nixon group? Not if you think of
cohesiveness in terms of the members of the group being having strong positive
feelings toward one another. In fact, there is evidence that a number of members
of the group strongly disliked and were in active competition with one another.
However, group cohesiveness is defined in terms of the resultant forces on individual members to continue their membership in and identification with the
group. Back (1951) pointed out that factors other than interpersonal attraction
can affect cohesiveness, a point also made by McCauley (1998) in his article in
this issue. Among the other factors are attraction to the group goal, the prestige
and other qualities of membership in the group itself, and attraction toward and
dependence upon the leader of the group. What can attract one to a group more
than the perception that this group is successful, coupled with the belief that
by maintaining significant membership in that group one’s own future can be
assured? These seemed quite evident in the Nixon group. Certainly after the
successful defeat of the Democrats in the 1972 election, they could sense that
belonging to that group and association with Nixon and his administration would
lead to their personal advancement both politically and otherwise.
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INTRAGROUP COMPETITION AND THE “RUNAWAY NORM”
It was this form of “cohesiveness” and its effects in the Nixon group which I
found particularly intriguing. The many illusions which Janis had described in
his analysis of the Kennedy advisory group were very much present: the sense
of invulnerability and superiority (buttressed by prior success), the suppression
of personal doubt, conformity to basic norms reinforced by suave leadership. . .
However, there was the additional factor which I called a “runaway norm.”3 The
concept is similar to the notion of group polarization. Though we usually think
of group norms as operating to lead to pressure to conform to the norm, there are
situations in which simply conforming to the norm is not sufficient. In order to
maintain one’s position in the group, or improve it, one must attempt to exceed
the norm. As the members each try to exceed the norm, the norm itself rises,
leading to escalation of behavior in the group. This is one explanation which had
been offered for the “risky shift” phenomenon—it is sometimes highly desirable
to try to be a bit more risky than other group members. In the Nixon group, the
norm was to be more aggressive, less inhibited by the usual moral restraints, in
taking action against the “enemy,” especially as represented in the Democratic
party and liberal thinkers. The model for such behavior was the president himself
who was known to have successfully utilized unrestrained aggressive techniques
throughout his political career.4 However, in the Nixon group, there two subgroups, characterized by Theodore White (1973) as “the big team” and “the young
team.”5 The individuals in each team were pressed to be more extreme than each
of their members, but this was further amplified by pressures on each team to
try to exceed the other in aggressiveness.
POLITICAL AND OTHER CONSIDERATIONS IN GROUPTHINK
In this issue and elsewhere there have been discussions of many examples
which are relevant to the groupthink theory. In some of these, it appears that
3
The concept of “runaway norm” is not original with me. However, I forget who I got it from
and therefore regret that I cannot give due credit. The physical analogy would be a thermostat
in which someone had altered the element so that as the temperature increased, the thermostat
is programmed not to reduce the temperature but to increase it.
4
Richard Nixon, over his political career, despite a few setbacks, appears to have been remarkably
successful in using strong, and sometimes Macchiavellian methods, to defeat his political opponents,
going back to his early defeat of Congressman Jerry Voorhis, in his first congressional campaign,
and popular Senator Helen Gahagan Douglas a few years later. [See, for example, Brodie (1981),
Mazo & Hess (1968), and Wills (1971).] For ambitious politicians who had been recruited to his
advisory groups, he would serve as a powerful referent and expert power in affecting their behavior
and also the norms of the groups of which they were a part.
5
I was, of course, pleased that Janis (1982) was able to include my analysis in his expansion of
his groupthink review in the second edition. In my analysis, I tried to represent the membership
of these two competitive teams in diagrams indicating the positive and negative relationships
among the members. Janis (1982) takes some issue with exactly who was a member of each team.
My representation was based on my reading of White (1973), which, in turn, were his observations
of the membership during the 1972 election campaign. Quite possibly there was a change by the
time of the meetings on the cover-up following the bungled Watergate burglary. In any case, I
would stick by my representation of the essential process.
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the basic features of Janis’s theory apply; others do not fit the theory so neatly.
It is important for us to keep in mind that in neither of his two books on
groupthink did Janis take the position that groupthink was the only factor
which accounted for the failures of the group decisions which he describes. In
that sense, then, I believe that it is reasonable to assume that Janis would
not have had any uneasiness in accepting Rod Kramer’s (1998) position that
political considerations would enter into the process as well, as indeed they
often have. In my discussion here, I have been focusing on the two examples
of group decision processes which appear to have gone awry: the Bay of Pigs
Fiasco and Watergate and the related cover-up attempts. Obviously, the two
examples are quite different in many ways, and I have pointed out some ways
in which they differ. In both cases, there were, in fact, political considerations,
but these were especially clear, I think, in the Nixon group. The entire process,
including the disastrous burglary, was guided by political motivations. The
additional difference, as we have noted above, is that Richard Nixon himself
loomed large in that entire process. His referent power, furthered by his immense success through lack of usual restraints, was especially powerful. His
reward and coercive power were also very salient. To a considerable extent,
the competition in the group, the runaway norm, can be seen in terms of who
could best emulate him and his immediate followers in giving no quarter to
political opponents.
Does Groupthink Necessarily Lead to Failure?
Groupthink, as it is generally defined, suggests a fiasco, a failure of the
group in its basic mission. Reviewing recent new information, particularly as
revealed recently in Nixon’s White House tapes, suggests that “failure” in its
mission need not be a necessary part of the definition of groupthink. While
there seems to be a clear deterioration of moral judgment, and a move to
extreme uninhibited action in the Nixon group, I think we might recognize the
frightening thought that in fact the Nixon team came remarkably close to being
successful! The array of weapons which Nixon and his team had developed in
dealing with uncooperative liberal Democrats and Republicans, news media,
government officials, including the Secret Service, the FBI, the IRS, and other
governmental and nongovernmental agencies (burglars, eavesdroppers, spies,
etc.), is truly staggering. Did these fail because of the natural deteriorating
process of groupthink? Not really. One might contemplate what could have
developed were it not for (a) some bungling burglars breaking in to Democratic
Party Headquarters at the wrong time and leaving some suspicious scotch tape
to keep a door unlocked; (b) some observant guards and custodians at the
Watergate building who happened to notice lights on at the wrong place at the
wrong time and then noting the suspicious tape; (c) Nixon’s confidently taping
conversations in the Oval Office, and later being reluctant to destroy these
tapes. Both Carl Bernstein (1997) and Alexander Haig (1997), as well as others,
discussing the Watergate phenomenon on its anniversary, and with the new
information recently revealed, have expressed alarm at how close we came to
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a virtual police state. So we must consider that many of the elements of groupthink which lead to reduction of restraints against extreme measures, and
suspension of moral values, might indeed lead to success, but with frightening
consequences. It is likely that we can find examples in which such unfortunate
outcomes have occurred. Some of the safeguards which Janis suggested might
help to avoid such outcomes, but it is likely that even more are needed.
GROUPTHINK: A GENERAL ASSESSMENT
The article by Fuller and Aldag (1998) is quite clever and entertaining.
However, in my opinion, they got carried away by their adopted role as devil’s
advocate. Even if most of us can identify some flaws in the groupthink analysis,
we would still give Janis a lot of credit for his careful and scholarly analysis,
his relating a broad body of literature on group processes and group dynamics
to the understanding of a series of very significant social-political events. Most
of the articles in this issue have taken issue with some of his applications and
some of his interpretations of the social psychological literature. However, it
is bordering on the absurd to see groupthink as in the same category with
collective imaginative nonsense such as the foul-smelling “el chupacabras”
(goatsucker) or the mythical tale of Tonypandy. There are, of course, many other
similar phenomena which they could also have cited. Why not the Abominable
Snowman, Sasquatch, the Lochness monster, or visiting aliens in their UFOs?
Yes, we can accept their point that myths and folk tales will often develop in
a community or society. However, can they really believe that that applies to
groupthink and to its widespread acceptance? No social scientific theory is
perfect, but there is no need to so demean Janis’s theories, the care with which
he examined the evidence and tried to make sense out of it, his application of
a wide range of careful research on group dynamics and social psychology, or
the intelligence of the many competent scholars who find them convincing.
Janis goes on to apply the groupthink model not only to the Bay of Pigs
fiasco, and Watergate, but also group decisions relating to the Korean War,
lack of proper defense of Pearl Harbor, escalation of the Vietnam War, and the
more effective decision in the Cuban Missile Crisis. There have been several
applications by others (several of which are discussed in this issue): (a) the
Space Challenger disaster (Esser, 1998; Moorhead, Ference, & Neck, 1991),
(b) the decision by the Japanese advisory group to bomb Pearl Harbor (Whyte,
1998), (c) decision-making in self-managing work teams, and top-management
teams (Moorhead, Neck, & West, 1998; Peterson, Owens, Tetlock, Fan, & Martorana, 1998). In practically all of these applications, the authors have found
some points in which the phenomenon they studied did not fit Janis’s groupthink formulation exactly. Often, these investigators have focused on an additional factor which needed to be considered, which fit that particular investigator’s line of research and theory. However, by and large, the basic principles
of groupthink theory have still held strong. Clearly, as with any dynamic
theory, there will be grounds for modification and improvement. Aside from
any inaccuracy in applicability to specific failures or successes in group decision,
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the impact of Janis’s work has been very substantial indeed, particularly in
making decision-making bodies aware of the ways in which they may develop
policies which lead to disasters, even when the decision-making group is competent, cohesive, and experienced. Even more important, we would hope that
work by Janis and his followers will sensitize policy-making and other decision
groups about what they might do to counter the effects of groupthink. From
reading articles in this issue and other works, I am convinced that in this
respect, the work of Irving Janis will continue to be quite substantial in its
impact on the ways in which important policy groups make decisions in the
future.
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