Why Are Liberals Prone To Groupthink?
Bill Donohue
August 28, 2026 In the early 1970s, Pauline Kael, film critic for the New Yorker, was stunned when Richard Nixon won the presidential election. She was famously quoted saying, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” That was odd. Nixon won 49 states.
Kael claimed she was misquoted. But she admits to saying something similar, “I live in a rather special world.” That’s putting it mildly—she lived in an intellectual ghetto where groupthink is commonplace. So do most liberals today. Just walk into the faculty lounge on any college campus to validate this verity.
In that same year, 1972, psychologist Irving Janis coined the term “groupthink.” He meant by that the uniformity of thought that occurs when members of a group fail to consider alternative views. The gist of what he said was picked up by writers in the late 1940s.
That is when Orwell wrote about “doublethink” in his novel 1984. Harold Rosenberg, a Marxist art critic who moved to the center after the war, wrote an influential essay, “The Herd of the Independent Minds,” that accurately described the same phenomenon; he said the herd mentality was especially true of New York intellectuals.
Why intellectuals, most of whom are on the left?
Rosenberg seized on the tendency of intellectuals to deal with abstract constructions, and not real-world experiences; this accounts for their lack of independent thinking.
Writing at the same time was Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. Author of many powerful books, he wrote an essay that sought to explain the same worldview. He found that the utopian bent that so many of these writers shared explained their propensity to think in terms of grand ideas, dismissing practical concerns.
Why does any of this matter? Consider the findings of a recent study on the occupations of those who give to Republicans and Democrats, published by InstaPundit.
It makes it unmistakably clear that in occupations that favor the Democrats, almost all of those who work in these jobs donate to their favorite party; but the level of agreement is considerably smaller among those who work in jobs where members favor Republicans. This gives a decisive advantage to Democrats.
Commentators are correct to say this finding shows that Democrats are much more likely to live in a bubble than Republicans. Yes, they are guilty of groupthink. But what is most troubling is the nature of the occupations that mark members of the two parties.
Democrats are found in high numbers among those who work in higher education, publishing, the arts, executives in the non-profit sector, psychotherapists and television. Republicans are found in high numbers among those who work in insurance, landscaping, the trucking industry, farming, construction, and the health field.
In other words, Democrats not only exemplify the herd mentality, they are in a position to affect the thinking of the public; this is not true of Republicans. Professors shape the minds of young people; landscapers do not.
Utopian visions, and a proclivity to abstract thinking, are hallmarks of liberals, most of whom are Democrats. Their lack of interest in practical, real-world, experiences is not a virtue. Indeed, it is a vice. | 
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