The Abilene Paradox

Any system taken to its extreme, if you think about it, ends up producing the opposite of what it was made for. Extreme speed increases the risk of a sudden stop, democracy brings out extremism, extreme cleanliness weakens us all the more in the face of microbes, capitalism generates much more poverty than wealth and the explosion of the means of communication always produces more incommunicability (like this word for instance).

Another curiosity is that when we are part of a system, we are unable to see it as a whole, just as the eyes that are part of our bodies are unable to see the back of our heads. This is true of any situation of which we are the actors. We only ever see one aspect of it, that's what makes things so difficult to understand sometimes (and why we all need an outside guidance), in particular, regarding human relationships.

Take for example the Abilene paradox.

A couple, receiving a visit from their son and his new fiancée during a weekend, hope to do something out of the ordinary on this occasion. Here are our four characters reflecting on their evening when suddenly the mother, reviewing the few ideas that come to her, ends up proposing a pizza at the nearby town of Abilene. She's not really looking forward to sitting in a car for that long drive, but she knows her son loves pizza (he eats it all the time), and she's hoping someone comes up with a better idea. The father, surprised that his wife would come up with such an unexpected suggestion, when he knows she hates sitting for too long in a car, thinks it would be showing bad grace to oppose it, even if driving at night is the last thing he wants. He also finds the idea of a pizza a bit ordinary. The son, who eats pizza almost every day at the end of the month, since his student budget does not allow him a great choice, does not dare upsetting his parents who are so eager to please him. And the fiancée, who avoids anything that could make her fat, thinks it might be rude to be difficult during a first meeting.

So, there they are, all four pretending to be delighted with such a good idea (the mother under shock and no longer daring to go back on her proposal) and on their way to an evening that everyone would have preferred to avoid. The Abilene paradox is the absurd phenomenon by which several individuals collectively engage in a situation that none of them, individually, desires. If the behavioral sciences have made it a model and given it a name, it probably is because the situation is frequent enough to be noted. You will not necessarily remember such a phenomenon in your life, but now that you know the rules of this rather absurd game, you will soon identify it in an astonishing number of situations (is it coming back to you?).

Social codes are far from encouraging us to express our desires, apart perhaps from the desire for conformity. Even more amusing, is the fact that we base this need for conformity most often on assumptions and hidden motives which lead us to do the opposite of what we want. So - think again and you may realize that sometimes the Abilene Paradox can engage an entire nation…

S.S.