I often hear it explained as don’t rock the boat. I have found that many people will act against their own interests just in order to not look as though they are dissenting. It is an issue in design, I’ve had customers agree to designs that they dislike, because the designer they were working with pushed that design. Then contact me later to redo the design, rather than tell the designer they didn’t like his design.
It is also used as a very effective sales tactic, the best example I know is the friendship bracelet scam. When I was in Europe they has street vendors that would walk up and ask for your hand to show you a cool trick. They would then take you hand and start weaving a friendship bracelet onto you wrist. As they had started this before you really understood what was going on, they could get kind people to just stand there for about 5 minutes as they wove the bracelet onto their wrist. Then when done, the vendor would ask for $5 or $10 for the bracelet as it was already tied to your wrist. Many that didn’t want the bracelet would just pay the money rather than question the person for stopping them and wasting their time. But, when someone refused to purchase the bracelet multiple times, you would really see the scam in it, as the vendor would cuss the person for wasting their time as they took the bracelet back and un-wove it to have a fresh set of string to scam the next tourist.
Don’t forget the bit where, whether paid or not, the “vendor” (or an accomplice, or 3 or 5) picks their pockets… Not unique to Europe, but that entire continent does appear to have a pretty laissez-faire attitude toward this business model.
Agree in many cases this may true.
This is also a central aspect of compromise: You don’t get everything you want. Just dissenting can lead to a stalemate. Whether to compromise or not depends on how strongly one values the position.
True, as this was a common scam, I saw the loan person as well as some that worked in small groups with an obvious goal to pick pocket tourists.
@Photomancer, I don’t confuse compromise and not acting in one’s best interest. A compromise is both sides making concessions to reach a settlement of a dispute, where settling the dispute is in the best interests of both sides. Not acting in your best interest is the act of taking an action that effects personal loss without additional gain to offset or exceed the loss. I think your referencing Coerion where people go along to get along, because if they don’t some worse force may come.
People collectively decide on a course of action that they think will please the others in the group. At the end the decision makes them miserable and they find out that none of them actually wanted to do it that way. Each of them lacked the courage to question the course of action and invariably it leads to the wrong action. It’s all about managing agreement, not managing disagreement.
It is illustrated with the story of a family that decides to make a long, hot, dusty drive into Abilene (sans air conditioning) to buy ice cream and has a miserable trip - everyone went because they thought the others wanted to go.
I have shared that parable with people who are close to me. Sometimes when we consider doing something that we think the other person would enjoy, we actually stop and ask, “are we on the road to Abilene?”