Marching To Your Own Drummer

What would you have done? It's one of the most enduring questions in psychology. We all like to think that in a moment of crisis, we'd rise to the occasion and show courage. And yet many of us have had experiences where we followed orders and did what we were told to do. This week, we talk with psychologist Sunita Sah about the reasons why many of us silence ourselves and follow orders, and how we can align our words and actions with our values.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 0:08Shankar Vedantam?

  What would you have done? It's one of the most enduring questions in psychology. If you were a German soldier in the 1940s, would you have followed orders?

• 0:20Shankar Vedantam?

  If you were a member of a Hutu militia group in 1994, would you have killed your Tutsi neighbors in the unfolding genocide in Rwanda?

• 0:29Shankar Vedantam?

  If you were a son or daughter of a slave-owning family in 18th-century America, would you have spoken out against racial injustice? What would you have done?

• 0:42Shankar Vedantam?

  The question is compelling because while we all like to think we would have done the brave thing, the right thing, many of us have the sneaking suspicion we might not. We fear that we might have fallen in line like everyone else and done what we were told to do.

• 1:02Shankar Vedantam?

  Today on the show, we explore the reasons many of us fail to stand up to unjust rules and authority. Not just to dictators or people perpetrating crimes against humanity, but to petty tyrants in the workplace, unfair rules in our cities, even mean-spirited gossip in our circle of friends.

• 1:23Shankar Vedantam?

  Why we silence ourselves and how we can align our words and actions with our values this week on Hidden Brain.

• 1:43Shankar Vedantam?

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• 2:15Shankar Vedantam?

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• 2:47Shankar Vedantam?

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• 3:21Shankar Vedantam?

  All of us can remember moments when we stepped up to do the right thing. Maybe we helped a fellow student who was on the receiving end of hurtful barbs. Maybe we defied orders that we knew were wrong. Looking back, we remember these moments with pride. But all of us also remember other moments, moments of silence, of cowardice. We don't post about such moments on our social media feeds, but we do ask ourselves afterwards, why didn't I say something? Why didn't I do something? At Cornell University, psychologist Sunita Sa studies why we stay silent when we know we should speak, and how to rediscover our voices. Sunita Sa, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  It's wonderful to be here. Thank you.

• 4:05Shankar Vedantam?

  Sunita, I want to take you back to your days in Pittsburgh. There was an evening one day when you felt a sudden pain in your chest. Can you tell me what happened?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Yes. I had this immense chest pain. And it was a pain that I had not felt before. And so I thought I should do something about this. And I ended up going to the emergency room in Pittsburgh, which is one of my first experiences of the healthcare service in the US, having moved from the UK. And it was very efficient. Within minutes, I was actually through triage, and a nurse had whisked me into an examination room, and they did a lot of tests, including an electrocardiogram to make sure there was nothing wrong with my heart, which was my primary concern. And everything was fine. So I was relieved. And my pain was going down a little bit.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  And I told the doctor, and I thought I was about to get released from the emergency room. And she said, well, actually, just before you go, I would like you to have a CT scan. And so I was like, oh, I wonder why? Why is that? And she said, just to make sure that you don't have a pulmonary embolism.

• 5:30Shankar Vedantam?

  Sunita had worked as a doctor in the UK before moving to the United States. She knew the symptoms of a pulmonary embolism, which is a blockage in the lungs that's caused by a blood clot.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  A pulmonary embolism causes what we call pleuritic chest pain. And this is a sharp pain. It catches your breath when you inhale and exhale. That was not the type of pain that I was experiencing. I just did not think that I had this embolism in my lungs. And so I did not think the CT scan was necessary. And I didn't want it. Because why expose yourself to ionizing radiation if you don't need it? I mean, with a CT scan, it's about 70 times more on average than the radiation you get from an X-ray. It's still small, but why have it if you don't need it?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  And so I should have said no to the CT scan. And yet I didn't.

• 6:33Shankar Vedantam?

  Moments later, Sunita found herself getting prepped for the scan. She turned to the tech and asked how much radiation the scan entailed. Sunita didn't need to ask the question.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  I knew how much radiation was in the CT scan. And so I wanted her to say, oh, are you comfortable with that? I wanted her to ask me so I could say, actually, no, I'm not. Do I really need this? And she didn't. She didn't. She just hesitated. And then I carried on. I carried on having the CT scan. And I was like, oh, this is not working. People are not registering my discomfort. And so I just lay back in the scanner and was perplexed why I couldn't say no.

• 7:18Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm assuming you didn't have a pulmonary embolism?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  No, the images showed everything was clear. Everything was fine. And I regretted so much not being able to speak up and just say, I don't think I have a pulmonary embolism. I just want to go home. I so regretted that.

• 7:40Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to ask you about another story, Sunita. You have a friend named Rick who was experiencing some lower back pain. And he decided that he was going to go in to get a massage. What happened?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yes. His doctor had actually recommended for his lower back pain, for him to do some stretching, some exercises, and that a deep tissue massage would probably help. So he booked one in New York City, and he was really looking forward to having some relief from his pain. And he walked in. The place was just very serene. It was a nice scented room, candles, lovely music playing. The massage therapist told him to get onto the massage table, and he did and thought, this is amazing. Then the massage therapist came in, and he put two warm hands onto Rick's back.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And then, all of a sudden, he dug his elbow in really sharp into his trapezius muscle, which is near the top of his back. And immediately, Rick wanted to say something. He wanted to scream out and say, ah! But he didn't. He hesitated and thought, okay, that's just the first, that's just the first part of the massage. But then it continued over and over. And each time the elbow dug into his back, his upper and his lower back and all along, he was just trying to stifle all this pain and screams. He just didn't say a word. He wanted to, but he could not say anything.

• 9:19Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that Rick not only left without saying anything, but he added a tip for the massage therapist on his way out?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  That's right. He thanked the massage therapist and then paid him and gave him a tip and then had a very painful subway ride back home. Now, once he got home, he told his wife about this massage and she said, that's not normal. Why didn't you say anything? And he was like, well, I didn't want him to think that he wasn't doing his job properly. I thought this is how massages go, so I just couldn't say anything to him. And she said, so you would rather have him hurt you than you hurt his feelings? And he was like, exactly.

• 10:09Shankar Vedantam?

  Sunita has asked herself how she and so many other people she knows have become so compliant. In her case, she traced it back to her family upbringing.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  When I was young, I remember asking my dad, what does my name, Sunita, mean? And he said, oh, in Sanskrit, Sunita means good. And so mostly, I lived up to that. I was known for being an obedient daughter and student. So I did what I was told. I did my homework the way that they wanted me to and expected. I even had my hair cut the way my parents insisted. And these were the messages I received, not just from my family, but from the community and from teachers, is to be good, to be polite, to obey, not to question authority. And mostly, I lived up to that.

• 11:05Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand your parents were fairly strict with you. And at one point, your dad would wake you up in the middle of the night to practice your scales. I mean, that's pretty intense.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think this is maybe a dynamics that is familiar to first generation children of immigrants. So I do remember my dad getting me out of bed in the middle of the night because I hadn't practiced my flutes. And I had to do the scales.

• 11:37Shankar Vedantam?

  Some time ago, Sunita noticed she was being similarly demanding of her own son.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  So we were in London around 2012 for the Olympics. And I was really excited because the Olympic flame was going to pass where I used to live in London. And I wanted to take him with me to see the flame. And he was nearly five years old. And we were walking along. It was a hot day and he was tired because he'd already been out in the morning and he didn't want to go. So he kept holding me back and I told him to hurry up, come. And then he just like, no, I don't want to go. He was jutting his chin out and I know that look very, very well now. And he just refused to go. So I tried to pick him up and carry him.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  He was too heavy and he just sat down in the middle of the pavement. And whatever I said, I couldn't make him go. So I had to give up on seeing the flame and I walked back home with him. And I looked at him and I said, why can't you just be good?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  And those words stayed with me afterwards because I remember telling my husband about it in the evening. And he was like, you sound like those people, do you remember? And I do. I remember when my son was born, he was a little baby, and well-meaning relatives would always be asking me, oh, is he good? And I was confused, like, what do you mean, is he good? He's a baby. That's what they meant was, does he sleep when you want him to? Does he eat when you want him to? Does he do what you want him to do? And this was a powerful realization for me that if we equate being good with being

• 13:24Speaker 01

  compliant, doing what other people want, then we equate also being defiant with being bad. And that's what I was brought up like. So that kept me awake that night, for sure.

• 13:39Shankar Vedantam?

  Think about the last time you were on a plane or train or bus, sitting nearby with two families. Both had small infants with them. One was calm and compliant, the other shrieked and screamed. Did you find yourself marveling at the good kid and annoyed by the bad kid? If you're a teacher, do you find yourself drawn to angelic children who follow the rules? And find yourself exasperated by kids who constantly test the limits? When we come back, the psychological drivers that prompt us to fall in line and how they can lead us astray. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 14:36Shankar Vedantam?

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• 15:08Shankar Vedantam?

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• 15:52Shankar Vedantam?

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• 16:06Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 16:10Shankar Vedantam?

  All of us need to follow rules. When you live in a country where people drive on the right, you cannot suddenly decide to drive on the left. Well, you can, but you'll quickly get in a crash. We expect schools and stores to be open when they say they will be open, and we expect courts and cops to come to our aid when someone breaks the law and harms us. But while rules do many good things in our lives, they can also turn us into unthinking automatons. At Cornell University, Sunita Saas studies the psychology of compliance and defiance.

• 16:47Shankar Vedantam?

  Sunita, in April 2004, an assistant manager at a Kentucky McDonald's gets a call from a police officer. Set the scene for me, Sunita. Who was this manager and what was the call about?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  So the manager, her name was Donna Summers. She's an assistant manager in her early 50s. And she's worked here for a while. At 5pm, the phone rings in the small back office. And online is just a deep male voice, someone who identifies himself as Officer Scott. And he says he's investigating a theft. So a customer has had her purse stolen. And he describes the person that they think has stolen the purse. That person is a young girl, about 90 pounds, with dark brown hair. So immediately Donna Summers says, that's Louise.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  But she's surprised because Louise is quite a responsible. She's a high school senior and she's never been known for being dishonest in any way. She's hardworking, she's bound for college, she's looking after her sick mother. And yet, that is who they identify as responsible for this theft.

• 18:02Shankar Vedantam?

  The officer cites various laws and criminal statutes that Louise allegedly broke. He tells Donna he has her supervisor, a woman named Lisa Siddons, on the other line.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  So Officer Scott tells her that they are also investigating Louise for dealing drugs. And it's very serious. The officers are on their way and they need to detain the suspect as soon as possible. They don't want the suspect to get away and they don't want her to get rid of any evidence. So they request Donna Summers restrain the suspect Louise in the back office and follow their instructions.

• 18:44Shankar Vedantam?

  Donna Summers brings Louise to the back office. Officer Scott is still on the phone. A note that this next part of the story involves physical and sexual assault.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  So Officer Scott is on the cordless telephone giving orders. And he orders Donna Summers to conduct a strip search, first of all. So Summers does. She asks Louise to remove every item of clothing. She shakes each item and places it in a plastic bag. And even though Louise starts crying and Summers comforts her and she thinks that the strip search is over the top, she thinks that she must obey authority, she must obey the police officer.

• 19:28Shankar Vedantam?

  It's cold in the back room. By this point, Louise is wearing only a McDonald's apron. When Donna Summers tells the police officer she needs to attend to the evening rush at the restaurant, he asks her to bring in someone else to watch the teenager.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  So she asks Jason Bradley, who's a 27-year-old cook, to take over. So Jason comes, he takes over the phone, and Officer Scott demands that Louise drops her apron so she can see whether she's hiding any evidence.

• 20:03Shankar Vedantam?

  Jason refuses to be a part of the strip search. He hands the phone back to Donna Summers and returns to the kitchen.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  So at this point, Donna Summers says that she can't spare any more staff because it's getting really busy in the McDonald's. And Officer Scott asks whether she is married. And she said, she's engaged. And he asks her, do you trust him? And she says, yes. And he tells her to call, call him, call your fiance.

• 20:36Shankar Vedantam?

  Donna Summers asks her fiance to come to her workplace. Walter Nix coaches youth baseball. He's a regular churchgoer. But once in the back room, alone with the frightened teenager, he obediently follows the instructions of the voice on the phone.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  So over the next two hours, Officer Scott asks him to do an array of different physical and sexual abuse to Louise, and he agrees, and he conducts this abuse.

• 21:09Shankar Vedantam?

  So at the end of this period, Walter Nix finally leaves and Donna Summers comes back. He goes to his car, Walter Nix goes to his car, but he recognizes that he has done something that he shouldn't have done. What happens there, Sunita?

• 21:25Speaker 01

  He rings his friend, and he immediately says, I've done something terrible. So it's only when he leaves that he recognizes that this was wrong. And after he's left, Officer Scott continues. He asks Donna Summers, who else is there? Is there another man that can monitor Louise?

• 21:47Speaker 01

  So at that point, Donna Summers goes back into the restaurant to look for someone. And the only person that she thinks of is Thomas Sims, who's actually a 58-year-old maintenance man, who is there just on his day off. He's having dessert and coffee. So she asks him to come with her to the back room. And then she hands the phone to him, and Officer Scott asks the same thing again. He asks Thomas Sims to tell Louise to drop her apron so that Thomas can see whether she's concealing any evidence. And Thomas now immediately feels alarmed. And he says, looks directly at Louise,

• 22:30Speaker 01

  and he says, "You keep that apron wrapped around you." And he hands the phone straightaway back to Donna Summers, and he says, "Something's not right about this. This is wrong."

• 22:44Shankar Vedantam?

  So at this point now, the whole ordeal has been almost three hours long. Donna Summers was told by Officer Scott that the police were going to be on their way, and presumably the police should have gotten there within three hours.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right. But it took Thomas Sims to come in and puncture this compliant atmosphere and say, "This is wrong," for Donna Summers to really take a step back and think about this. And when Thomas Sims said these words, she decided, like, "What's going on?" And she picked up her cellphone to call her manager, Lisa Sidens, who Officer Scott said was on the other line. And Lisa says, "What are you talking about?" And only then does she realize that this is a hoax. She puts the other phone to her ear, and the line is dead.

• 23:39Shankar Vedantam?

  Talk a moment about the fact that as Donna Summers picks up this call, the officer is citing various police codes and statutes. She decides to take that first step of calling Louise to the back room. And from that point on, each action is only one small step beyond the previous action. Talk about this process of gradual escalation, Sunita. You're like the frog in the proverbial hot water. You're not aware that you're being boiled.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  That's right. Like, once you start complying, you do a little bit more and a little bit more. And then, at what point do you start saying no? It's harder to say no to end the compliance now if you didn't do so early on. You know, what is the line that you draw? That this has gone too far now?

• 24:33Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to discuss another aspect of compliance. Shortly after you finished medical school in the United Kingdom, you were invited to a free financial consultation. What was your life like at the time? What were the state of your finances? And who was offering this financial consultation?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  I was working as a junior doctor in the UK. And I received an invite to meet with a financial advisor for free at work. So I agreed to meet with this financial advisor. And I remember that meeting very well. So it was in the office, it was in the hospital's posh meeting room, a room that I didn't even know existed. And I walked in and there was this blue plush carpet. In contrast to the stone cold tiles of the floor, this was a nice change.

• 25:28Shankar Vedantam?

  Sunita sank into the couch. The financial advisor, whose name was Dan, came in.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  He was very tall, big smile, handsome, very sharp suit. And he shook my hand. And he spoke to me for a very long time, about an hour, about my, mostly about my finances, which was surprising because I had a very limited disposable income at the time, working as a junior doctor. He built up this fantastic rapport with me. And at the end of an hour, he said that I should invest in a couple of funds and that he would write a report for me about my finances. And all this would be for free. So I was impressed. It sounds great. And since I was tired, I did blurt out,

• 26:18Speaker 01

  "What's in it for you?" Well, he responded with, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." And I remember being surprised then because I was working as a junior doctor and we got free lunches all the time from the pharmaceutical reps.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And so my eyes got wider and he carried on and he said, no, there's no such thing as a free lunch. I'm going to receive a commission if you invest in the funds that I'm recommending today.

• 26:49Shankar Vedantam?

  So in other words, he has told you that he has something of a conflict of interest in the advice that he's giving you. What was your reaction at this point?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that disclosure of the conflict of interest changed the dynamics of the situation for me. So I did feel less trust in the advice that he was giving me to invest in these funds. But at the same time, I didn't want Dan to know that I no longer trusted him. I didn't want him to know that his disclosure had corrupted the good rapport that we'd built up and this relationship that we now had over the last hour.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  And so I started to feel more uncomfortable. I actually felt more pressure to sign and say that I will take the fund's advice. I will invest in the funds that he is recommending. Because if I don't take his advice now, I'm essentially depriving him of his commission. So both I felt that pressure to be helpful, but I also felt a lot of pressure not to signal distrust.

• 28:01Shankar Vedantam?

  So you've come up with a term that I love called insinuation anxiety. What is insinuation anxiety, Sunita?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  So insinuation anxiety is a distinct type of anxiety that arises when people worry that their non-compliance with another person's wishes may be interpreted as a signal of distrust. Insinuating that the person is not whom they appear to be or should be. So we don't want to insinuate that, for example, our advisors, our coworkers, or even our friends and our family are not trustworthy, that they're incompetent or they're biased or even corrupt. And this anxiety increases the pressure to comply with another person.

• 28:49Shankar Vedantam?

  You conducted a very interesting experiment on a ferry in Long Island. Tell me about that experiment and what you found.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  We had a middle aged white man go up to passengers, just over 250 passengers, to ask them to fill out a very short survey. So it was an innocuous survey, just asking them, was the ferry running on time? How clean is the ferry? How many people are you traveling with? And for filling out this survey, they would get $5 in cash. So people agreed to fill out this survey. And once they had finished the survey, the man asked them, well, you know, I can give you the $5 as promised, or I can enter you into this lottery, which pays out somewhere between $0 and $10, but the average payment is usually less than $5.

• 29:43Shankar Vedantam?

  Hmm, what did people do?

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Pretty much everyone went for the cash. Only 8% chose the lottery.

• 29:52Shankar Vedantam?

  And that makes sense, because you're getting a sure $5 versus getting something that's likely to be less than $5.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. So it really shows that the preference for nearly everyone was the $5 cash, you know, the certain $5 bill. But when the man gave advice, I think you should go for the lottery, that went up to 20%. But even more surprising, there was one condition where the man had to reveal his ulterior motive for recommending the lottery, that he would receive a bonus, a commission, if you took the lottery. And so in that way, he was disclosing his conflict of interest, much like Dan, my financial advisor, had disclosed to me.

• 30:33Shankar Vedantam?

  Right, what happened then?

• 30:37Speaker 01

  In that condition, compliance with the lottery advice went up to 42%. It more than doubled the advice alone.

• 30:47Shankar Vedantam?

  I mean, it's really puzzling, Sunita, because of course, as you've shown, when you haven't given anyone advice, their preference is just to take the $5. When you give people advice to take the lottery, it goes up to 20%. But when you tell people, "Take the lottery, and I am going to profit if you take the lottery," you would imagine that number should go down because now people should be suspicious of me and my motives. But the number goes up, it doubles.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  That's right, and people are suspicious. They trust the advice less. And some even said that they like the man less because of that. But they still went along with it. And the reason is insinuation anxiety. They didn't want the man to know that they trusted his advice less.

• 31:32Shankar Vedantam?

  Tell me about the gender patterns you noticed in running this experiment, Sunita.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  So in this particular experiment with insinuation anxiety and the man giving advice, this insinuation anxiety on compliance occurred only in the women participants. We didn't see it in the men. And we were surprised because other experiments that we had run in different contexts showed no gender difference. But in this one, there was a clear gender difference. Women felt insinuation anxiety much more than men did. And that increased their compliance.

• 32:12Shankar Vedantam?

  So, Sunita, you have looked at different fields, aviation and medicine, to see how often people speak up when they see a mistake. What have you found?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  I found some really shocking statistics. So, one survey found that nine out of 10 healthcare workers, most of them nurses, don't feel comfortable speaking up when they see a colleague making an error or taking a shortcut. And crew members in commercial airlines, nearly 50% of them, don't want to speak up when they see their superior making a mistake.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  These can be life and death decisions, and insinuation anxiety can account for some of the reasons why they don't feel comfortable speaking up.

• 33:04Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to talk about another aspect of compliance. Sometimes, you know, we're just swept along by the current, by what everyone around us is doing. You tell the story of a young Marine named Matthew, who was deployed to Iraq when he was 19 years old. He's serving near Fallujah, and things are not good when he gets there.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  So things were not great at all. He was in the middle of a war zone. His friends were getting blown up by various different explosive devices. In fact, his best friend was killed.

• 33:34Shankar Vedantam?

  So at one point, he's in a unit that's basically investigating a neighborhood, and they hear an explosive device go off. It's near a mosque. Describe to me the events that happened next, Sunita.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yes, so when this grenade went off, sort of too close for comfort, immediately they hear orders to dismount and to engage. So some of his squad, they run towards the mosque. Matthew, along with others, stay back to provide cover. And when his men came back, they had four young men as prisoners that were dusty, bloody, blindfolded, and in handcuffs. So Matthew was given one of the prisoners to basically look after. And his prisoner was yelling at the top of his voice in Arabic, and he couldn't understand him, and neither could his superior. So his superior tells him to shut him up.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  And Matthew asks, "What do you mean? What do you want me to do?" And his superior says, "It's not complicated. Hit him in the mouth." And so Matthew looks at the prisoner, and he sees blood streaming from his nose into his beard. And he doesn't want to hit this man. He really doesn't, but it's a direct order. His best friend is dead. He doesn't want to be seen as a coward. So he raises his hand, and he hits him in the mouth. And then his superior says, he's still talking. Hit him again. Hit him in the stomach. And I remember Matthew looking at me while he's telling the story.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  And he said, so I raised my hand and that's what I did.

• 35:25Shankar Vedantam?

  You know, some time ago, Sunita, we spoke with political scientist Timur Koran. He works at Duke University. And many years ago, he came up with this term called preference falsification, where he describes what happens in many societies where you have, you know, a current of some kind is running through a society. Maybe it's a, you know, someone has come to power and this person is very powerful or a regime has changed. Or, you know, some of the work that he did was looking at, you know, East Germany after the fall of the communists and integration with West Germany. And he finds that in many of these societies, what happens is that as people sense that the tides have turned, that the current has changed, they have a very strong impulse to basically fall in line with whatever the prevailing

• 36:10Shankar Vedantam?

  current is. And the idea of preference falsification is I have preferences, but I'm going to, in some ways, suppress my preferences. I'm going to falsify my preferences because my preferences are out of line with what the majority seems to want. You know, in the classic example, you know, he describes the story of a reporter going to, you know, East Germany shortly after reunification with West Germany. And the reporter is trying to find, you know, former communists to speak with, to ask how they are faring under reunification. And when he gets there, all the communists tell him, you know, I never really was a communist in the first place. I was just pretending to go along with the old regime. And, you know, I always was for capitalism. I always was for the West. One of the points that Timur Koran makes is that it's really, really difficult

• 36:53Shankar Vedantam?

  for individuals to break out of this when this happens to them. It's one thing to notice it or even to smile about it when it happens to someone else in another country. Very difficult to do something when you yourself feel swept up by the tides around you.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  That's really fascinating to hear. And it aligns with some of my research as well. If you don't admit to yourself or to someone else that you feel something is wrong in this particular situation, if you don't say that you're uncomfortable with it, it's easy to convince yourself that you felt a different way at some point. Cognitive dissonance is very strong, as we can see.

• 37:40Shankar Vedantam?

  A great deal of our rule following is not conscious and deliberate. It's implicit and automatic. Most of the time, we are so compliant, we don't even realize we are being compliant. When we come back, how to regain a sense of agency? You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 38:06Speaker 02

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• 38:36Shankar Vedantam?

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• 39:09Shankar Vedantam?

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• 39:46Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Every country in the world has its national monuments to recognize and remember its heroes. These heroes are invariably people who stepped up to do dangerous, difficult, and courageous things in moments of crisis. They are the stars of our history books, our beacons of inspiration. Psychologist Sunita Sah is the author of "Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes." She says one common lesson from the heroes in our history books is that they listen to their inner voices in times of crisis. Think back to that horrific case of impersonation at the McDonald's.

• 40:27Shankar Vedantam?

  Some employees rebelled against Officer Scott's instructions, and others complied, but every one of them felt a defining inner emotion.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  They felt tension, something that I call resistance against resistance, the resistance to resist, which is that they felt this tension between what they thought was the right thing to do and the tension to go along with what others expected of them.

• 40:56Shankar Vedantam?

  So, obviously, most of us don't like being tense. We don't like being stressed. But you say that this tension actually can play a very salutary role in our lives. How so?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Well, if we think about that tension, it can actually be a warning sign to us that something is wrong and that we should pay attention to that. It could be the first signal that you should defy before you even consciously know that you want to defy. And I recognize that tension in them because that's the kind of tension I have felt when I want to defy but feel strong pressure to comply with what somebody else is telling me. And it can show up in different ways for different people, but we often experience that kind of tension when we want to go against something. So instead of ignoring it or sweeping it away or thinking it's not worth our doubt, we should really think about what that tension means and whether this really means

• 41:53Speaker 01

  this is the time to act, this is the time to speak up.

• 42:01Shankar Vedantam?

  I want to go back to the story you told me about how, when you had just finished medical school in the UK and you were weighing how to manage your relatively meager savings, you met this charming financial advisor named Dan who told you that he stood to benefit if you chose his recommended investments. Did you go ahead and take Dan's advice, Sunita?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Well, I felt immense pressure to just sign in front of him. But as soon as things started getting really awkward, my pager actually started beeping. So I had to tell him there's an emergency, a medical emergency, I have to go. And he was fine. He looked a bit deflated to begin with, but then he was, that's OK. I will send you everything and you can sign the paperwork later on. And that allowed me to exit the situation, which I now call the power of the pause because it allowed me to not have to send a signal of distress back to him. When I got the papers a week later and I didn't have to sign on the dotted line in front of them,

• 43:09Speaker 01

  I could much more easily assess my very low income, and so I threw the papers away.

• 43:15Shankar Vedantam?

  In some ways, this points to one of the most important pieces of advice you have when people are dealing with whether to consent to something or to defy something, and that is to buy themselves time.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. Ask for some time to think about it. Step away from the situation. Physically, if you can, would be great. Psychologically, if you can't.

• 43:36Shankar Vedantam?

  So I feel like this happens all the time in so many different situations. You know, you're buying a car and the salesperson basically tries to pressure you into making a decision quickly. Or you're sitting in a dentist's chair and the dentist says, you know, we need to do this and that, or here's the procedure we need to do. There's a great amount of pressure for us to act quickly. And of course, when we have to act quickly, it becomes much more likely that we will act in compliant ways.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  That's right. If, especially if something is seen as an emergency, it becomes very difficult to say no. A lot of times, we can take more time to think about a decision. We don't need to make decisions in the heat of the moment. So we can step away. We can take the power of the pause. And one thing that I've learned about defiance that is really helpful is that if you can take the power of the pause, it is great. But surprise often disables defiance. And anticipation enables defiance. So preparing for situations like that in advance is particularly helpful before the moment of crisis.

• 44:44Shankar Vedantam?

  One of the other ideas that you talk about that can be helpful is to name our own emotions and to potentially talk to ourselves in the third person. Talk about this idea. What do you have in mind and why would it work?

• 44:58Speaker 01

  So if you can't get physical distance, which is ideally the best thing, one of the things I could have done in front of Dan was to get psychological distance. And researchers such as Ethan Cross examined what happens when we talk about ourselves in the third person. So you could close your eyes and you could say, Sunita, what is it you really want to do here? And that gives us some distance to really think about what we want, rather than what the other person wants for us.

• 45:28Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that there has been research that finds that, in fact, patients are less likely to follow advice that is marred by conflicts of interest when they hear about this advice through a third party and they have some time to think about what to do.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  That's right. So some of my research has examined what if the disclosure is not coming directly from the doctor, but it comes from a receptionist in a letter. I've even looked at giving out letters in advance, informing patients of conflicts of interest. In general, when people can deliberate on the conflict of interest disclosure, and it's simple, and it's timely, and it's given in advance, we do feel less trust in the advice. If you have an opportunity to change your mind, in some of my experiments, that shows that's one of the most powerful things. So even though there's high compliance in front of the advisor, it drops a lot once the advisor is not in the room

• 46:26Speaker 01

  and you can make the decision in private or you can change your mind. And some of those results were very striking and shows us what we display publicly is not really our private preference.

• 46:40Shankar Vedantam?

  You cite an idea from the political scientist James March about three questions that people can ask of themselves when they feel like they're being pressured into doing something. What are these questions?

• 46:52Speaker 01

  These are three questions that James March came up with with regards to decision making in general in any situation. And the three questions are: who am I? What type of situation is this? And what does a person like me do in a situation like this?

• 47:13Speaker 01

  And I apply these three questions to situations that might require defiance. That even though we might ask these questions all the time when we're making a decision, and we often ask them implicitly, it's really good to make them explicit. And think of them as some type of compass, so they go around in a circle. Who am I? What type of situation is this? So we can assess the situation for safety and impact. And what does a person like me do in a situation like this? What is my responsibility? And then how we act feeds back again into who you are.

• 47:52Shankar Vedantam?

  So talk about why asking these three questions is compelling. And I noticed that one of the questions is not what should I do in this situation? But what would a person like me do in a situation like this?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  I find that very powerful because a lot of us have values, but we don't make them explicit. So we have values that we might say is integrity, equality, compassion. But just saying those values and not living by them day to day is often what happens. Like, there's a large gap between who we think we are and what we actually do. And that starts at a really young age. There was a survey of over 20,000 high school students that showed that nearly two thirds of them said that they had cheated on a test.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Nearly one third said that they had stolen something from a store in the last year. And more than 80% had said that they had lied to a parent about something significant. That breaks my heart because I have a high school student.

• 49:05Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm sure your high schooler is one of the 20%, Sunita.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  But these figures are likely to be conservative.

• 49:13Shankar Vedantam?

  Of course, it's a sacral port.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yes, one in four of them said that they had lied about a question on the survey.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  And yet, you know, we say that we're happy with our ethics and integrity. So even though we rate integrity very high, we often don't live by the values that we rate. And so asking ourselves, what does a person like me do in a situation like that? We can get to our aspirational selves. If you think you are this type of person, what would I actually do in this situation? How is it that I would like to act? And this is the type of person I am. I am the type of person that would say something.

• 50:04Shankar Vedantam?

  There are times in our lives when defying authority and disobeying orders can be scary. We might feel psychologically scared. We might even feel physically scared. These fears can be paralyzing. In our companion episode to this story on Hidden Brain Plus, we explore how we might deal with those fears. It turns out, one of the greatest antidotes to fear is not courage, but love. If you're a subscriber, that episode should be available right now in your podcast feed. It's titled "Defeating Fear." If you're not yet a subscriber, I invite you to check out a subscription with a free seven-day trial. Go to support.hidenbrain.org.

• 50:46Shankar Vedantam?

  If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co/hiddenbrain. Your support doesn't just unlock great content. It unlocks a way for us to keep bringing you great content. If you're a longtime fan of the show, it's your way of showing us that you would like us to keep doing this into the future. Again, those links are apple.co/hiddenbrain or support.hidenbrain.org. Sunita Sa is a psychologist at Cornell University. She's the author of the book, "Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes." Sunita, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 51:37Shankar Vedantam?

  Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Powell, Kristin Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor.

• 51:56Shankar Vedantam?

  If you have follow-up questions for Sunita Sah, and you'd be willing to share those questions with the Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us at [email protected]. Use the subject line "Defiance." That email address again is [email protected]. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.