Analysis of the Movie Abilene Paradox

Essay on the topic “Analysis of the movie Abilene paradox”

First of all I would like to express my gratitude (as we were taught during the lectures) for the choice of the movie. We were discussing lots of interesting and thought provoking topics during the lectures that I was aware of and that I was thinking lots of time. One that we were discussing during the last lecture was just awesome. I had lots of situations connected with this problem, but I couldn’t form all my ideas and thoughts in one pile and call it groupthink. Yes, exactly, all my troubles I can call the influence of groupthink.

Let’s came back to movie and understand the situations that happened to the heroes of these stories. There were introduced several situations about the influence of groupthink. One of them was about the visiting a restaurant. Sitting on a porch, one of the members of family offers to travel to Abilene for a dinner. Everybody agrees on this idea, but when the family comes back home one of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?" Then the mother-in-law says so quietly that it would be better to stay at home rather to go to the restaurant. After this, all members started to share with each other that actually they didn’t want to go. Creator of this idea also tells that he didn’t want to go; he just had a desire to relieve the tension and deliver a pleasure for everybody. Each of them just tried to please and support the idea to spend time somewhere together. So, the group together decided to take a trip which absolutely none of them wanted.

Another story was about the business plan that was doomed to failure. Everybody feels that the result will be like this but they are uncertain to initiate the conversation about this. They agreed to accept this business plan and when it becomes obvious that this plan is bad they start to share with the feelings that they had before.

One of the most funny and common situation was about the marriage. The boy who is supposed to get married indeed doesn’t love the girl, the same with the girl who doesn’t like the boy. They are getting married in order not to be the object to laugh at in their small town.

We can observe different situations with the same outcomes. People just try to please and comfort other people when in deed they are very unwilling to do it, moreover, sometimes they do it to the detriment to themselves.

We’ve enjoyed while watching movie because we can find a prototype in all these stories and we can observe from inside how the situation serious is.

The main and prominent question is who or what encourages us to do this?

Let’s recall one of such situation from real life and count the reasons of such deals. One of the main reasons is: what other people think about me if I don’t do this. Also one of the reasons: my mother told me that I must do it. We can also include to our list such reason as “they helped me with something 10 years ago so I must”. The most serious reason when we feel like obliged to do this, who else if I won’t. I hate the situation when somebody says “They are not strong enough, they can’t do this themselves”. Lots of reasons make us do something that we don’t want to, because we must.

        Have you ever thought that you have your own life and this life, this time is limited. We spend our precious time in order to please somebody while scarifying our own desires and needs. We are dependent on somebody’s opinion. Every time we care what other people thing or say.

        You didn’t think they also don’t care they have their own lives and they think in what way to comfort themselves, not you. The only one who cares about your feelings is parents or soul mate, because you have common desires, problems and so on.