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Management happens
distress) are unlikely in the world of pharma with its large entry
barriers and deep pockets, detailing may be with us for quite a
bit longer.
The Abilene paradox
Of course, it is not only rms that conform to what others
are doing; individuals do too. For example, it is a well-known
phenomenon from social psychology that people are reluctant to
voice minority opinions. You may recognize this issue and have
experienced it yourself sometimes; when a whole group of people
seems to agree on something (a course of action, proposal, etc.)
but you have doubts about it, it can be hard to speak up against
it. And if you do collect the courage to speak up against it, you
do so reluctantly, ready to take the heat.
And we’re right to be reluctant to speak up. Research also shows
that minority dissenters are often “punished”, in the sense that
people in the majority group get irritated, will blame you for the
deal falling apart, may even start to give you the cold shoulder, if
not spit in your tea when you’re not looking.
Therefore, quite often, people don’t speak up at all if they
disagree with a particular course of action, if they feel they are
likely to be the only ones against it. Instead, they stay quiet. And
there is an interesting consequence to that. We only know that
others disagree if they actually speak up. If they don’t speak up,
we are inclined to conclude that they do not disagree! As a result,
it may be that we stay quiet because we assume that everybody
else is in favor while, in reality, lots of others are making the same
erroneous assumption! In social psychology, this phenomenon is
known as pluralistic ignorance or the “Abilene paradox”.
The rst person to describe the Abilene paradox was Professor
Jerry Harvey, from the George Washington University. He
describes a leisure trip which he and his wife and parents made
in Texas in July, in his parents’ un-airconditioned old Buick to a
town called Abilene. It was a trip they had all agreed to but, as it
later turned out, none of them had wanted to go on. “Here we
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