Abilene paradox attitudes towards them if they do not go along. This action-anxiety arises from what Harvey termed "negative fantasies"—unpleasant visualizations of what the group might say or do if individuals are honest about their opinions—when there is "real risk" of displeasure and negative consequences for not going along. The individual may experience "separation anxiety", fearing exclusion from the group. The theory is often used to help explain extremely poor group decisions, especially notions of the superiority of "rule by committee". For example, Harvey himself cited the Watergate scandal as a potential instance of the Abilene paradox in action. The Watergate scandal
No-no paradox No-no paradox The No–no paradox is a distinctive paradox belonging to the family of the semantic paradoxes (like the Liar paradox). It derives its name from the fact that it consists of two sentences each simply denying what the other says. A variation on the paradox occurs already in Thomas Bradwardine’s "Insolubilia". The paradox itself appears as the eighth sophism of chapter 8 of John Buridan’s "Sophismata". Although the paradox has gone largely unnoticed even in the course of the 20th-century revival of the semantic paradoxes, it has recently been rediscovered (and dubbed with its current name) by the US