Linguistics; pragmatics; the "Abilene Paradox"...
During our recent discussion on how to ask for favors and respond to requests for favors, naath commented:
"What I want to know is what to do when someone says "Lets all go and do X" and I don't want to do X very much but am willing to do X *as a favour to them* but don't want them to go around thinking that I *like* X."

Which made me think of a concept that I've found very useful, called "The Abilene Paradox," first written about by Jerry B. Harvey. The Wikipedia article on the Abilene Paradox [at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox ] quotes an anecdote from Harvey's article, "The Abilene Paradox and other Meditations on Management" in the Summer 1974 issue of Organizational Dynamics. My version of that anecdote goes like this:


It's a hot summer day in Texas, and a group of family and friends is sitting at home relaxing, with air conditioning and nice cool drinks and good company and conversation.. Everybody is comfortable and happy and enjoying their lazy afternoon together, when suddenly one member of the group suggests that they all get in the car and drive to Abilene -- fifty miles away -- for dinner, and they agree to do that. The drive is long and hot and boring; getting around in Abilene is equally hot and boring; the food at the restaurant isn't very good; and then there's another long hot boring drive to go through. And only after they're finally home again do they discover that everybody would really rather not have gone to Abilene for dinner. The person who suggested it only did so because she felt it was her obligation as hostess to suggest "doing something"; the others in the group only agreed because each of them thought that the others wanted to go have dinner in Abilene, and they didn't want to be wet blankets and spoil everybody else's day.


The basic pattern here is simple enough. Somebody in a group says "Let's all go and do X." And although nobody [sometimes not even the person who makes the suggestion] wants very much to do X, everybody agrees -- because, like naath, they're willing to do X as a favor to the others and their perception is that the others really do want to do X.

Sometimes this ends as it did in Harvey's anecdote, with everyone learning after the fact that nobody wanted to do X. Sometimes, as in naath's example, it ends with one or more people in the group acknowledging that they don't even like doing X, whatever it is. That's the best outcome, since people learn from the experience, and it often leads to a mutual agreement that the next time somebody makes a "Let's all..." suggestion everybody will respond to the suggestion honestly. Whether people actually follow through on that resolve will vary with the individual, but at least it has been openly acknowledged as one of the options available.

And then there are the times when it doesn't turn out this way, because nobody in the group says anything about not having wanted to go to Abilene, and everybody goes right on thinking that everybody else did want to go and did enjoy the experience. There are families, and organizations, and businesses, that go on for decades suffering through some sort of experience that everyone involved heartily dislikes, without anyone ever discovering that it's an empty tradition that nobody would keep if they had a choice.

Jerry Harvey's proposed solution is to set up a new tradition: Before a group actually makes a decision, one person in the group will say something like "I'm just checking... Are we maybe Going To Abilene?" And that utterance constitutes formal permission to speak up and say you don't really like what's being proposed and would rather not do it, so that the next step can be productive negotiation.

Based on my experience with this journal, I suspect that there's an Ask/Hint split here, and that the Askers among you may find it hard to imagine a scenario in which you wouldn't feel perfectly free to just respond to "Let's all go and do X" with "No, thanks, I'd rather not" or "Good grief, why would we want to do that?" I also suspect that as your life goes on you're likely to discover that such scenarios may come your way after all. For example.... When the setting is a meeting at your workplace and the person making the suggestion outranks you substantially. Or when the setting is a big family gathering and the person making the suggestion is a much-loved member of the family that nobody would ever want to embarrass. Or when the setting is a science fiction convention, and the person making the suggestion is the writer or artist or filk Guest Of Honor. Or... Other possibilities come to mind.

Which is why an agreed-upon-in-advance group protocol for finding out whether you're all just Going To Abilene is so valuable.