Skip to main content

Abilene paradox: Group think



According to Wikipedia:

In the Abilene paradox, a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many or all of the individuals in the group.


In simple words, Abilene paradox is when each member of a group is a against the popular choice of the group and mistakenly believe that opposing it will cause a problem. It is a major problem in a big organization as well as in real life.


The term was introduced by management expert Jerry B. Harvey in his 1974 article "The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement". It was named like this because one day he and his family were sitting outside playing and having fun. His father-in-law jokingly suggested taking a trip to Abilene which was 44 miles away for supper. They all agreed because everyone thought other person wanted to go. But it turns out that it was an awful trip and a waste of a perfect Sunday. So, whenever such situations occur he is always reminded of that trip to Abilene.

We can see Abiline paradox in every day life, in our friend circles (like when some friend suggest something and we do it but later regret that), in organizations (like a project that we know is not be possible, but have to do that regardless so that our boss doesn't fire us) and many other things. One of the biggest misconception is that we assume if we don't perform the required task we would hurt somebody and thus our mind mis interprets the situation and over exaggerate the bad results if we won't do that task. Like, when we are in a group and somebody suggest doing something no matter how bad it is, we do that because we think if we won't do it my friends will think I am not social (I am a freak etc etc) or the friend who suggested it wants to do that thing so badly and we will let him down. In organizations, when we are stuck in a dead end project but we beilieve that our manager will fire us if we won't do it.

Usually when this paradox occurs we blame others, like the employees will blame the manager, the manager will blame CEO, CEO will blame the Director, the Director will blame the employee and this cycle continues.

How to this:
We have to properly weigh the cons and pros of the task and then make a rational decision.
Properly, weight the bad effects of a task and don't let our minds exaggerate the situation by worsing it and convincing us that its good for us.
If it do occurs discuss it in a group again, so that people who agree with you can support you. But be prepared with facts and data to support it.

So, concludes the post about Abilene paradox.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Social Influence: Some tips and tricks

In our previous posts, we have learnt about some of the techniques in Social Psychology. Now in this post I want to tell you about some techniques that you can use in real life to influence people or to protect yourself from being influence by other people and make rash decisions. Some of the tips are: People more likely to help you when you ask them to imagine or predict doing something. Telling some stranger your name first can also be helpful when asking a favour. One can say “Hello, I am ___ and I was wondering whether you do me a favour.” Talking with people is more helpful that talking at people when asking for something/favour. Engaging people in dialogues rather than a monologue. Now I would like to tell you about the most commonly used persuasion techniques. These techniques are: 1.       Foot-in-the-door technique 2.       Door-in-the-face technique 3.       Low-ball technique N...
Post a Comment
Read more

Poker Analysis using Python (numpy and pandas)

In this I did an analysis on poker. I made my own dataset by randomly selecting 7 cards from the dataset. It does not gives the actual results. It is more of a simulation of actual data. I have used jupyter-notebook for this you can use any IDE according to your liking. Start by importing the modules. import pandas as pd import numpy as np import random import time Then I created a function calculate_hand which takes hand as a list and returns a boolean list with the corresponding values [royal_flush, straight_flush, four_of_a_kind, full_house, flush, straight, three_of_a_kind, two_pairs, pair, highcard] . If the hand has three cards of same value three_of_a_kind will be True , also pair will be True because if a hand has three of a kind, it also has a pair. Highcard always return the high card. ALL_CARDS_NUM = {'2': 2, '3': 3, '4': 4, '5': 5, '6': 6, '7': 7, '8': 8, '9': 9, 'T': 10, 'J': ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Science of Persuation: How to persuade others?

According to wikipedia.org, Persuasion is: Persuasion is an umbrella term of influence . Persuasion can attempt to influence a person's beliefs , attitudes , intentions , motivations , or behaviors . In other words, persuasion is a process aimed at changing a person's (or a group's) attitude or behaviour toward some event, idea, object, or another person(s). Knowing some of the persuasion techniques can be very helpful for a person as this techniques can help that person to excel in life (and/or his respective field like business, study, and even relationships). So let's begin by asking these three questions and then I will tell you about Robert Cialdini 's 6 principles of persuasion. So the questions are: Should one use counter-arguments while persuading? Should you take the central route (or peripheral route) to persuasion? Should you scare the receiver of the persuasion? Answering these questions, counter-arguments can be helpful at times w...
Post a Comment
Read more