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

Obedience to Authority.. Milgram experiment

Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another individual, who is usually an authority figure. It is assumed that without such an order the person would not have acted in this way. But this obedience can be harmful in some situations. The most famous example of this can be the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Do we believe that all of the people in Nazi Germany wanted to kill those six million European Jew? No, but they were bound and ordered by the authorities to do so. This obedience to authority figures is in our nature. This can happen to all of us.  In one of the famous experiment, the nurses were told by the doctor to give a certain medicine to the patients which the nurses didn't know about. Out of 22 nurses which participated 21 gave those medicines to the patients. Now let's talk about the Milgram experiment. It was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Conformity and Asch Experiment

Jump to search According to Wikipedia, Conformity is: Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms. Norms are implicit, specific rules, shared by a group of individuals, that guide their interactions with others. People often choose to conform to society rather than to pursue personal desires because it is often easier to follow the path others have made already, rather than creating a new one. In other words, Conformity is basically yielding to group or social pressure. Group pressure can be of many forms like bullying, teasing, criticism etc. Solomon Asch was one of the first scientist that worked on conformity and in turn influenced Miligram experiments . He is best known for his conformity experiments . His main finding was that peer pressure can change opinion and even perception.  Conformity, indicates agreement to the majority, which are brought by a desire to ‘fit in’ or to be liked (normative) or because of a...
Post a Comment
Read more