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
Free abelian group with finitely many nonzero values; for this functional representation, the group operation is the pointwise addition of functions. Every set "B" has a free abelian group with "B" as its basis. This group is unique in the sense that every two free abelian groups with the same basis are isomorphic. Instead of constructing it by describing its individual elements, a free group with basis "B" may be constructed as a direct sum of copies of the additive group of the integers, with one copy per member of "B". Alternatively, the free abelian group with basis "B" may be described by