June 3, 2025 • 45 mins
Have you ever said yes when you meant no?
Whether it’s nodding along with a doctor’s recommendation, going along with your boss, or staying silent in a meeting—most of us are guilty of complying when our gut says to speak up.
In this episode, organizational psychologist and Cornell professor Dr. Sunita Sah breaks down the powerful psychological forces behind why we comply—and how we can learn to defy. From her research on “insinuation anxiety” to her experience as a physician, Dr. Sah explains how to shift from automatic yeses to authentic decision-making so that we may all live true to our values.
She shares her three-question Defiance Compass, reveals how to truly give (or withhold) consent, and offers practical steps to stop performing agreement and start honoring your values.
💡 Defiance isn’t rebellion—it’s integrity in action.
Website: SunitaSah.com
Substack Newsletter: Defiant By Design | http://sunitasah.substack.com/
LinkedIn: @drsunitasah | https://linkedin.com/in/drsunitasah
Instagram: @drsunitasah | https://www.instagram.com/drsunitasah
TikTok: @drsunitasah | https://www.tiktok.com/@drsunitasah
Facebook: @sunitasahuk | https://www.facebook.com/sunitasahuk/
Whether it’s nodding along with a doctor’s recommendation, going along with your boss, or staying silent in a meeting—most of us are guilty of complying when our gut says to speak up.
In this episode, organizational psychologist and Cornell professor Dr. Sunita Sah breaks down the powerful psychological forces behind why we comply—and how we can learn to defy. From her research on “insinuation anxiety” to her experience as a physician, Dr. Sah explains how to shift from automatic yeses to authentic decision-making so that we may all live true to our values.
She shares her three-question Defiance Compass, reveals how to truly give (or withhold) consent, and offers practical steps to stop performing agreement and start honoring your values.
💡 Defiance isn’t rebellion—it’s integrity in action.
Website: SunitaSah.com
Substack Newsletter: Defiant By Design | http://sunitasah.substack.com/
LinkedIn: @drsunitasah | https://linkedin.com/in/drsunitasah
Instagram: @drsunitasah | https://www.instagram.com/drsunitasah
TikTok: @drsunitasah | https://www.tiktok.com/@drsunitasah
Facebook: @sunitasahuk | https://www.facebook.com/sunitasahuk/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, welcome to ten seconds to air. I'm your host,
Alita Gienne. Are you living according to your values? While
most of us would say yes, many of us are
not being honest. How many times do we comply with
a doctor who wants to run tests when we know
we don't need it, or we agree with a coworker
or boss when we know better.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Why do we do that?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And how can we say no in a world that
demands yes. My guest today is doctor Sunita Saw, a
renowned organizational psychologist and professor at Cornell University. She says
there are many factors that influence the choices we make.
She also says society puts an incredible amount of pressure
on us to comply. She joins me now to explain
(00:41):
why we say yes when our values are more in
line with no, and how we can start making decisions
that align with our values right now.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Goodbye, go live, go love forever.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Doctor Saw, Welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
The first rule for today is do not comply. If
I ask you a question, don't comply if you don't
want to.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Answer it, I'll answer a different question.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
You'll answer a different question. Excellent.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well, I'm looking forward to getting into this because I
know I am guilty of saying yes when I probably
mean no, and then later on.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I go why did I say that?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
So many of us continue to do that, and you
have the answer as to why, and you're going to
get us out of it, right.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I'm going to try, definitely try.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So what goes through your mind ten seconds before you
speak on this topic, meet with students, or perform in
some way.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So I always talk about the power of the pause,
especially if you need that just before you're deciding whether
or not to defy. So that's of ten seconds. The
power of the pause, I think is extremely useful in
many different situations where you just catch your breath and
decide how to react. Rather than it being an emotional response,
(02:14):
a need response, you can ask yourselves something about the situation.
So if it's in a situation where you want to defy,
you could ask yourself is this safe? Is this effective?
Or The first question I always recommend is does this
go against my values? Because that's when you want to
that's when you know that you have to defy.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
That takes so much control.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yes it does, Yes it does, And That's why I
always say, definance is a practice. It's a skill that
we need to learn and practice over and over again.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, have you always been someone to question this?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Or did this come up because you saw this happening
and you said, hey, wait a second, why how did
this originate for you?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
For me, I grew up with what I would call
a masterclass in compliance. So as a child, I was
known for being an obedient daughter and student. And my name,
Sanita actually in Sanskript, means good, and mostly I lived
up to that. So I did what I was told.
I complied, I got up when I was told to,
(03:17):
went to school on time, even had my haircut the
way my parents wanted me to. So these were the
messages that I received, not just from parents, but from
teachers and the community. And it was to be good,
and to be good often meant to obey, to be polite,
to fit in, to do as you're told, don't question authority.
And so we start equating compliance with being good and
(03:41):
defiance with being bad. And then in my research, actually
my first career was in medicine, mainly because of expectations.
I went to medical school and then I qualified and
worked as a physician, because again that was the expectation.
But I did take time out during my medical degree
to do an intercalated degree psychology, and it was there
(04:01):
I got introduced to some infamous work on authority to
obedience and why people comply, and I was fascinated by it,
just like you know, as a child, even though I
was so compliant, I was always fascinated by people who
could defy and how they could do it so much
easier than knew how to be themselves. They knew how
(04:22):
to speak up, and I really wanted to look at
that in more depth. And when I did, I discovered
that there's some real problems with being so compliant. And
that's when I started to discover that we actually need defiance,
and we've misunderstood what it means to defy.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, why is it that we comply so much? Because
I agree, when you're a kid, you want to comply, right,
You know that that will please your parents, and when
you're in a job, you comply will please your boss.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Exactly why how are we doing that? So we become
so socialized to comply, It always become a default response,
So our brain's become wired to comply. We get short
term rewards from that, and then when we get older,
it becomes really hard to defy. It feels very unnatural,
and so we actively resist defiance. And there's three key
(05:16):
reasons for why this happens. So the first one is
we feel this enormous pressure to go along with what
other people want. And I've really delved into that aspect,
this social pressure in my research and uncovered a psychological
process that I'm happy to talk about. But that's the
first one. The second one, we don't really understand what
(05:37):
compliance and defiance and consent really are, so we've misunderstood
all of those terms. And then the third one is
once we decide to defy, we don't actually know how.
We don't have the skill set to do it. Because
we've been trained so much in compliance, we don't actually
know how to defy, what things to say, how to
(05:58):
put it into action. So because of those three reasons,
we end up complying when we don't want to it. So, yes,
that's not really a.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yes, go to the first one, and why is that happening? Like,
let's dive into these.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, absolutely, So the very first one this social pressure
to go along with other people, and it happens a lot.
So you can imagine that your boss asks you to
do something and you think it's the wrong way to go,
or that they even ask you to take a shortcut
and you don't think that's the right thing to do,
(06:35):
and yet everybody else is doing it. Then it becomes
very difficult to say no because if you say no,
it implies that they're either incompetent or unethical, or it
implies something negative about them. So my terminology for this
is insinuation anxiety. It's a distinct type of anxiety that
(06:57):
arises when we worry that our noncom clients with another
person's wishes is going to be interpreted as a signal
of distressed So it insinuates that the person is not
whom they appear to be or should be. So let
me describe some other situations that this can happen. Like,
I mean, it can happen in very small, steak situations,
such as you're at the hairdresser and they're saying, okay,
(07:19):
you know, you should really try this new cut and
you trust me, and they're cutting away and you're thinking, oh, no,
I'm not sure. I'm not sure, and you don't say
anything and they finish, you hate it, and then they
say isn't it great? And you're like, yes, thank you,
And if you're anything like me, you'll probably tip them
and walk out.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That is a great example.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
So it can be very small steaks like that, or
it could be even more serious problems. So when I
looked into the research, I found that once survey discovered
nine out of ten healthcare workers, most of them nurses,
did not feel comfortable to speak up when they saw
a colleague or a physician making an error. Oh wow,
(08:00):
now that is a situation. We really need people to
be speaking up. And it's also why co pilots might
not speak up to their pilots. In another study, about
fifty percent of crew members on commercial airlines felt uncomfortable
to say anything when they saw a mistake. So again
(08:21):
another life and death situation, And let me describe one
more since I'm a professor. There was a young female
professor that was asked to be on a committee for
assessing grants. And so they were reviewing grant applications and
deciding who would receive a grant and who wouldn't. And
(08:41):
she was on this committee with four senior men and
when it came to one particular applicant, and that applicant
was a black man. She said that the conversation changed
and it went more to gossip rather than looking at
the quality of the application or the credentials, And she
really wanted to say something, but she didn't. And when
(09:04):
she came out, she said the one thing that she
wanted to do was the thing that she couldn't do,
and that was to really say something and challenge the
fact and ask them questions as to should we go
to the credentials or just She just said that she
couldn't because it would imply something negative about the integrity
(09:26):
of the other people on the committee.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
So I have a question about that, because what you're
saying is if she spoke up, it would imply something
negative about the committee or for example, the hairdresser. If
you spoke up, you're saying that that means I don't
trust you. I sort of think, and I'm you know,
you're the expert on this. I also feel if I
were to speak up, that would maybe make people think
(09:52):
differently of me. Right, So that's the other stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
So that's also a possibility, is that people will think
you'd be difficult instructs in the harmony, and that's all
part of the same thing of insinuation anxiety, because we
have two selves. We have this ideal, independent self where
we want to do what we like, you know, we
want to express our agency and do whatever we want.
And then we have this other, interdependent self where we're
(10:19):
really concerned about harmony with the other person and we
want to be part of a group in society and
get on with everyone else. And these two ideal selves
that there's always a little bit of tension and you
can never reach one ideal or the other, and you
probably don't want to. Where insinuation anxiety comes into play
is that you do become very concerned about the harmony aspect,
(10:44):
but more so about offending the other person and implying
something negative about the other person. I mean, certainly we
feel with the defiance, people worry about defying because they
worry about negative consequences themselves, which could be a negative
judgment on themselves. But insinuation anxiety, the actual scientific term,
(11:06):
is the negative signal going to the other person. We
want to save their face. We don't want to bring
them down in the eyes of other Like even nurses
say if they see the physician doing something in front
of the patient, it's even more difficult. And so you
do this to save the integrity of the other person,
the face of the other person. But what's really interesting
(11:28):
about it is that you actually diminish some of your
own integrity in order to do that, And so this
becomes really quite a powerful force that keeps many of
us silent and compliant. Yes. And I've found it in
a range of different situations, in medical situations where people
have told me that they've been to the dentists and
(11:49):
dentisters recommended all these different treatments and they want to
say no, but they find it very difficult to say
no when they're in the back of a taxi cabin
that it's going the really long route and they want
to say something, but they can't. So many situations and
stories I've heard of people succumbing to insinuation anxiety and
(12:10):
not being able to speak up and say how they
really feel.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, yeah, Does it happen more for men versus women,
women versus men.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
So, in most of my studies, I found no gender effect,
apart from one where I found a really high gender effect,
and that was in a study I can call it
the ferry study, where we had a middle aged white
man approach passengers on a ferry going from Connecticut to
Long Island and asked them to take part in a
(12:40):
survey for five dollars in cash. Now, the survey was
really short, with innocuous questions such as is the ferry
running on time? Is very clean? I wasn't interested in
those answers. But once that survey was finished, the man
would say to people, well, I can give you the
five dollars as promised, or I can enter you into
(13:04):
this mystery lottery that pays out on average less than
five dollars. So you can imagine what most people chose.
So most people ninety two percent chose the five dollars cash.
So that is the preferred response of most passengers. But
when the man recommended I think you should go for
the lottery, twenty percent said okay, So we went up
(13:29):
from eight percent to twenty percent. Even more alarming was
another condition where the man would reveal an ulterior motive,
like a conflict of interest. So if he recommended the
lottery again and then said, but I should let you
know that I'm incentivized to recommend the lottery, because I
also receive a commission. If you take the lottery, then
(13:51):
compliance with this bad advice you could call it, goes
up to forty two percent.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Who why is that happening? Why are we doing that?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
So what I found was what was really surprising is
trust in the advice went down. The people didn't like
the man anymore. But it was the measure of insinuation anxiety.
How uncomfortable are you to reject the advice because I'm
uncomfortable to reject it because it implies that the man
could be biased, you know, or signals I don't trust him.
(14:24):
And that effect was purely driven by women. Men didn't
succumb to that in this condition, but this was women
did not want to signal they didn't trust the man's advice. Wow,
So that was really quite quite surprising. In other studies
I've done, I've found even higher levels of compliance, which
(14:46):
really is quite astounding when we think about where a
country that really prides ourselves on our independence and agency
and free thinking, that even when you make the advice
really obviously bad, people will still take it. So yes,
in that condition, we did find a gender effect. So
(15:08):
in some situations, certain groups of people are more affected
than other groups of people, and we should be aware
of that. Well women, you just well women in that situation. Yes, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
So I have a question about medical advice. You're a doctor,
you had patients. I think this happens a lot when
you go into the doctor. You have this as a patient,
You have this idea that they know better, and you
just kind of let things happen. You refer to this
(15:39):
in your book about a test that you took and
you knew you just you didn't want to take the test.
You knew you didn't need the test. I feel that
that happens very often and we just simply don't say
anything it happened to you. Is that because we're afraid
to tell the doctor, like you know, we are we
feeling like I'm questioning you exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I mean, it's such a shame.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
So the power dynamics are there, right, and that level
of insinuation anxiety is even stronger in this situation because
the doctor has expertise and they are supposed to put
your best interests at heart. They have, you know, do
no harm, you know, So in that case it becomes
even more difficult. When you're in a situation where there's
(16:28):
high expectations for integrity and benevolence and competence, then it
becomes very difficult to say you don't trust the other side.
And most of the time it's not an element of distrust, right.
You know, certainly, if you're going to see a doctor,
you might know certain things better about your body than
(16:49):
the doctor does. But even though I've heard so many
stories of you know, the doctor's always in a rush
and not really taking the time. And there's different ways
to approach advice in medicine, and you know, some people
really want the paternalistic type advice. Just tell me what
to do. I'm going to follow it. And we do
have high trust in our doctors, and it would be
a shame if we didn't, if that was completely lost.
(17:12):
But there are times when less it's more in medicine,
and they can also be an aspect of overdiagnosis and
overtreatment that's been well documented in the medical literature. Because
I was aware of that and also the differences between
how medicine is practiced in the UK and the US,
(17:32):
and because I'd worked in respiratory medicine or pulmonary medicine
you call it here, when they asked for something to
test to see if I had a blood clot in
the lungs, I knew I wasn't suffering from that kind
of of pain. I knew I had a distinct kind
of pain. So I did have the knowledge and understanding there.
But you're right, even though I had that knowledge and understanding,
it was so difficult for me to say no and
(17:53):
become the difficult patient and insinuate that they don't know
what they're doing or giving me bad advice. Because you're
in that type of situation where you're very vulnerable, and
it's the biggest context for having informed consent. This is
where informed consent should be at its ideal. And yet
(18:14):
even then in those situations, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Is it possible that as a patient, you've been on
the other side of this, so help us on that
side of it. Is it possible that the patient is
not giving enough information or I often see maybe a
patient comes in and just wants help, you know, just
doesn't give you all the clues, and therefore it's there's
maybe it goes to number two that you were talking
(18:38):
about about being misunderstood, or that there's not there's just
not enough information to make a good decision, and therefore
we end up down this kind of rabbit hole of one,
you know, compliant moment after another that maybe we didn't
intend to it, it wasn't the way we meant it
to be, but it just kept going in that direction
(19:00):
because of lack of information or being misunderstood.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
As a patient. Yes, yes, yeah, so I would say
in general, not just patients, but in many different situations
that once we start complying with something, it becomes harder
to then start to say no. A lot of defiance
comes early on, and so if we do start complying,
(19:26):
we really have to make that extra effort. And again
it could be because we don't understand what compliance and
defines some consent, So I can tell you so, compliance
and consent are often conflated with each other. They're assumed
to be the same thing, but they're actually fundamentally different.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Okay, so slow down just one second. So compliance and consent,
I'm just wrapping my head around that not the same thing,
Absolutely not. Okay, Okay, go ahead and define that now.
Compliance and consent.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
So compliance is something that's externally imposed, it's something that
we slide into. It could be an automatic yes, or
something we do reluctantly, so we go along with it,
and it's usually due to some kind of external pressure,
so a suggestion, advice, or even societal expectations. We comply
with those things. Consent is fundamentally different, and what I
(20:22):
do and lay out in the book is informed consent
in medicine. I take the definition of that and I
apply it to other important decisions we make in our lives.
And I think this is a really useful exercise that
we can do when we're thinking about consent. So for
true consent, we need five elements. Okay, So first of all,
(20:42):
we need capacity. So that's the mental capacity, so we
don't want to be too sick under the influence of
alcohol or drugs, and physicians are always supposed to examine
patients to make sure they have the capacity to make
an informed decision. So capacity is the first one. The
next one is knowledge, so you need information about the
(21:05):
decision you're about to make. But it's not just being
given the information. The third element is actually thoroughly understanding
that information, so you need a good grasp of all
the facts, the risks, the benefits, and the alternatives. So
that's capacity. Knowledge understanding. The fourth one is the freedom
(21:28):
to say no, because if you don't have the freedom
to say no, then it's merely compliance. It's not consent.
So you need to be able to say no. And
if all four of those elements are there, then the
fifth element is your authorization. You're deeply considered authorization of
yes if it's your consent or what I call your
(21:50):
true yes, or no, if it's your dissent or your
true no or defiance.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
This all sounds great.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
The question that comes to my mind is do we
all know what are real? What we really want, what
our values really are. It seems to me that it's
really easy to slide into a lot of things comply
you're you're a kid. You talk about being a kid,
being agreeable and complying, and so maybe we don't know
(22:17):
what we really want and so compliance is kind of easy.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Can sometimes be easier, but they are actually large costs
of compliance if we go against our values. And that
comes back to what is it that we really want?
So the very first step in my defiance compass is
to ask ourselves who am I? And that's a really
important question because we don't often think about what our
(22:42):
values are, unless unless you're in one of my classes,
and I have my executive students do this all the time,
like you know, what are your values? Like, think about
your values and write down and explain why your values
are really important because that makes you who you are.
And the reason one I ask them to write it
down and explain is because the research shows that your
(23:05):
intended behaviors are more likely to follow if you actually
write down your values, and clarifying our values actually leads
to a lower biological stress reaction. So we have lower
cortisol levels if we know who we are, and it's
really important for a number of reasons. Because another exercise
I do with my executive students is that I ask
(23:29):
them one of the values that I see year after
year after year with this exercise is integrity. So we
very much value integrity, like we don't want to be
called untrustworthy or anything along those lines or dishonest. So
when I ask my students before we do the values exercise,
(23:50):
to rate yourself on your level of honesty on a
scale of zero to one hundred relative to other people
in the room, where if you think you're the least
honest in the room, be zero and if you think
you're the most honest in the room, you would be
one hundred, and if you're about average, it would be fifty.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Oh, I can't wait to hear how this turns out.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, can you guess how it turns out?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Are people saying there are fifty I don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
No, they're not. They're all saying they're about eighty five
or over. Like they rate themselves really highly on integrity. Yes,
I think I'm like really high. So hardly anyone says fifty,
and no one's going below fifty. I'm saying that, right, yeah, so,
And yet if fifty is the average, you would expect
(24:35):
half the class to be below and half the class
to be over this. But everybody thinks that they are
extremely honest, which might be great. But then what the
research show is that even at a young age, what
we think we are, what you believe your values to be,
is quite different from how you actually behave so a
study of over twenty thousand high school students. In that study,
(25:01):
nearly two thirds confessed to cheating on a test. Nearly
one third admitted to stealing something from a store in
the past year. I found that quite shocking. And then
the third one, which really broke my heart, was more
than eighty percent said that they had lied to a
(25:23):
parent about something significant. And these numbers are likely to
be conservative because.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
They're not going to tell you. Maybe they're not telling Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
And like the students even said like they'd lied on
at least one of the four.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Questions, chances are okay.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, So it's it's not unique to high school students.
What I've learned is that so for so many of us,
the distance between who we think we are and what
we actually do is enormous.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And so that's a big deal.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
That's really a huge yeah, because to clean that up,
we need to decrease that gap between who we are
or who we aspire to be, or who we think
we are and how we actually behave. And this is
why I have this defiance compus, which starts off with
who am I? And then the last question in that
there's three questions, three main questions. The last question in
(26:14):
that defiance compass is what does a person like me
do in a situation like this? So, what does a
person like me if you're thinking about yourself with these
values integrity, fairness, compassion, equality, whatever your values are, what
does a person like me do in a situation like this,
then you can tap into your aspirational self because if
(26:35):
you are not speaking up when you see injustice or
in fairness or other aspects that you really value, if
the situation is going against your values and you don't
act like the person, what does a person like me
with these values doing the situation like that, then it's
going to change who you are. So it leads back
into who am I? And so that first step of
(26:57):
really clarifying what's important to us and why is very important.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
It's such a great template to be thinking about. But
I have to say when I open the book, the
first story you tell is the George Floyd story, which
really speaks to exactly what you're doing in the research,
and you talk about the other officers that were also
holding down George Floyd. And what makes me think about
(27:28):
is that when things happen, are we able to ask
ourselves the right questions or what should our process be
to get ourselves too straight to our values so that
we can make the right decision about the person that
(27:48):
we are or that we want to be in every
situation right exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And that's like a horrific situation that rookie cops found
themselves in. Yeah, and here this is why it becomes
really important to prepare for those situations well before the
moment of crisis. We can't if we're surprised by something,
that's always going to disable our defiance because we don't
know what's going on. We freeze, we fail to put
(28:15):
our values into action. So if we're not ready for
that moment when it comes an it's really hard even
if you have these values to act in alignment with them.
So how can we do that? Well, some of the
stories that follow that one of other police officers and
how they've behaved is actually some of them were trained
(28:37):
during the time that that incident with George Floyd. They
were trained during that time and they had in their heads,
I don't want to ever be in that type of situation.
What am I going to do about it? And this
is what we can do, because one of the ways
to train for defiance is to make it at practice
and have this action plan. And we can anticipate a
(29:00):
lot of the situations in which defiance is requiet because
we've been in our workplace. We know this particular professor
is going to say something inappropriate in the next meeting,
because he said it in pretty much every meeting that
we've had. We know we're going to get asked to
do certain things. And as one young police officer said
(29:21):
to me, I knew this was going to be a
tough job, and I knew I was going to get
asked to do unethical things. I was going to be
asked to look the other way. So he was prepared
and he had a mentor. So it's not just about
intellectually knowing. So even in the police academy where it
says if you see something wrong to speak up, that's
not enough. Intellectually we know that, but we don't have
(29:42):
the behavioral training. Our brains are still wired to comply.
So we need to anticipate the most common situations where
this will happen. They're often more predictable than we think.
Then we need to visualize it. We kind of picture
it first, and then we need to practice by scripting
out and role playing, so our bodies get used to that.
(30:04):
Our ears get used to us saying defiant words, and
our mouths get used to saying them, and our ears
get used to hearing them. So we need to repeat
that and practice it so we can be ready when
the moment arise. And there is a wonderful quote by
a Greek poet that says, under duress, we don't rise
(30:25):
to the level of our expectations. We fall to the
level of our training. So that is why we need
that's the only thing that's going to rewire neural pathways
so we can be defiant in the moment.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Are there other external factors that happen in that process
in determining what we are going to comply with and
not conmply with, whether it's emotional or religious or you know,
one of the other factors that might come into play
that get in the way of us staying true door
of a.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Well, there's the external pa factors. There's many, like different
types of social factors so explained insinuation anxiety as one
psychological process. There's also the fear of consequences, and of
course like how socialized are you? Are you part of
a particular work institution that has norms for compliance? Are
(31:22):
you part of a religious affiliation that also has expected roles?
So most of us are part of groups and affiliations
and institutions where the workplace might be for example, very
expressive or it might be non expressive. So the environment
definitely takes does have a big effect on us, and
(31:45):
if we're in that type of situation. So you can
look at Rosa Parks's famous no on the bus that
really had it changed a lot. It was very effective,
but if you think about it, her no was preceded
by hundreds of moments of compliance. She complied with segregation
laws many times before until she did her famous no,
(32:08):
And we often comply before our no, and that's okay.
You know, there's situations where we comply because the costs
are too great or we know it's not going to
be effective. But some people like, was it safe for
Rosa Parks to defy on the bus that day? Not really?
I mean, yeah, she was receiving death threats and other things,
(32:28):
and yet for her, she was really connected with her
values and on that day she thought it would be effective.
So we can't just ask is it safe is it effective?
Which are the two questions. We do need to consider those,
of course, but we can also rationalize that it will
never be safe or never be effective enough. So we
need to ask it's a very personal question to uds
(32:49):
is it safe enough for me? Will it be effective
enough for me knowing that some people will take on
great costs to stand up for what they believe in.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, I think that some people or may listen and go,
you know, I have a boss or I have someone
at work that I just I don't agree with. They
don't they're not in ligne with my values. At the
same time, you need the job and if you question
too much or then so how do you handle that?
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Yeah? So this comes aligne along with you know, the
defiance calculus. So is it safe? And safety isn't not
just physical safety, it's also financial safety, psychological safety, there's
other things that we need we need to consider. And
one of my students was telling me about when he
got his first job and he had his wife, they
(33:41):
just had a child, who was very excited about it,
and then he discovered corruption at the top levels. What
was he going to do because he needed the job
and he needed the financial security, So he did look
the other way and hope that somebody else was going
to speak up about this. So there are many costs.
But whistleblowers, even though there's protections for whistle blowers, often
(34:03):
then there's not enough protection for whistle blowers. So these
become very individual decisions of I can't defy in the
way that I would like to right now, and so
I'm going to consciously comply, which is very different from
the type of compliance I was talking about that we're
wired for that we've fall in. Its conscious compliance is
(34:23):
when we have all five elements for consent, we have
the capacity, we have the knowledge, the understanding, the freedom
to say no, and we could authorize, but we think
the costs are too great right now. So we're going
to consciously comply, not forever, but we're going to defer
defiance to another time.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
That's an interesting point because I also don't want to
beat myself up over complying when I think that it's
the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Oh right, yeah, absolutely absolutely. So you want to consent, yes.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yes, and when this all works out perfectly, when you
truly understand when you go through that with your students,
the who am I? And then and then what does
this uh? When you go go through the three questions
what does it look like? How should it look in
the perfect world? Once we get to where we need
to be with with asking ourselves those questions, yes.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
So who am I really taps into your values. So
you need to know what your values are. And here
we're very explicit by what we mean by value. So
it's not goals, it's not moral convictions such as homosexuality
is wrong or abortion is wrong, because those things can
be defined divisive and there's more than one answer, there's
at least two right, and so it's subjective by values,
(35:41):
they really come down to sort mostly single words, but
very powerful words like integrity. There's no right or wrong, integrity, benevolence, compassion, empty.
These are the values that I see time and time again.
They seem almost universal and they're very powerful if we
can act in alignment with them day after day. It's
(36:04):
what shapes your behavior on a daily basis. So who
am I? And then the second question is what type
of situation is this? And that's where you're asking is
this safe? Is it effective? And you're really looking outwards
at the environment and asking those questions. And then the
last question what does a person like me do in
a situation like this? And then that is tapping into
(36:26):
two things. That's your responsibility, so connecting with your values
and who you're responsible for. Is it yourself? Is it
your family? Is it your community, Who is it that
you're responsible for in order to live in alignment with
your values and also having the ability the skill set,
have you practice for it, because if you haven't, then
it becomes intention but not behavior.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I love those questions.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
So if people want to who are listening, want to
start today and say how do I go about doing this?
I've been rolling through life and I thought I was
complying or incenting or defying, or I thought I was
doing it all right, But really I haven't really thought
much about this, and they would like to start implementing
their values. Would you suggest those three quests begin there?
(37:12):
Or do you have a different starting point?
Speaker 3 (37:15):
I think begin there if you have time to before
a situation is start there. Start with who I am.
That's where it always that's the beginning, is to really
know who you are and what do you stand for?
Speaker 2 (37:29):
And then from there, let me say two things.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Right that I would love people to be able to do. Is,
first of all, have this mindset shift about what we
think about defiance. So many people think of defiance as
being really loud or bold, or violent or angry or aggressive.
They have a very negative connotation of it, or they
might think it's superhuman in an out of reach, it's
(37:53):
something heroic like Rosa Parks, and I want to tell
them that you don't have to be brave or a superhero.
You don't have to have a personality or be larger
than life. Is actually a practice, not a personality, So
you can be compliant one day defiant the next day.
It isn't just for the brave or the extraordinary. It's
available and it's necessary for all of us. So we
(38:14):
can define in our own unique way. There's no particular
way that this is the right way to define. We
can find out like some people will do it by protests,
in by marching, other people will do it by writing
a letter. There's many different ways that you can define
with far less stress and ants that we have to
that we usually have. And that really comes with asking
(38:35):
ourselves when we're in the situation, does this situation go
against my values? And we're aiming for this values driven defiance,
not knee jerk reactions. And when I said that, we've
misunderstood what it means to defy. This is why I
came to this revelation. We actually need this new definition
(38:56):
for defiance. Right, So whereas the old definition. Well, the
Oxford English Dictionary definition is to challenge the power of
someone else boldly and openly. And I grew up in
the UK, so I'm not want to normally disagree with
the Oxford English Dictionary, but in this situation, I think
it's way too narrow and it doesn't honor our agency.
(39:17):
And my definition of defiance is simply to act in
accordance with your true values when there is pressure to
do otherwise. So it becomes this proactive positive voice in
society because if you think about it, all our individual
acts of compliance, of consent, of defiance, they create the
society that we live in, and that it affects our
(39:39):
lives at workplaces, our communities. And that's why I'm very
passionate that we understand truly what.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
It means to defind right. I love your definition. I
hope I hope the Oxford Dictionary takes it.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
And yes, I hope so too.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Anything I didn't ask you about that you wanted to
just mention before before we wrap.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Up again, when like the situations that I spoke about
that are life and death situations like the rookie cops,
the nurses, the co pilots, even when it's not life
and death. We often keep silent when something is wrong
and we have that kind of tension, and we need
to ask ourselves, you know, if you think compliance is
(40:22):
being good and definance is being bad, that it's sometimes
bad to be good, Like what do we actually sacrifice
by always trying to be so compliant? And we can
really tap into that tension that we feel, Like I
often feel tension when this situation is asking me of something.
(40:45):
There's expectations are going in against what I think is
the right thing to do, and when we're in that situation,
we often feel some type of tension. It might manifest
in different ways for different people. Like for some people
it's their voice constricting, or their throat constricting, their mouth
getting dry, getting a headache. For me, I feel unease
in my stomach. You know, that's something that doesn't feel
(41:05):
right here, And I differentiate that from a gut feel.
This is about when there's two forces colliding what you
think is the right thing to do and what somebody
else is expecting for you to do. That's actually the
first stage of defiance because if you didn't feel tension,
then you have given all your power away to someone else,
(41:26):
and so you would just go along with it. Yeah,
that's fine. But the fact that you actually feel tension
means that you have some agency, you have some power,
that is your strength. Just don't sort of try and
sweep it away that you know, ignore it like what
other people like we often do. Right that you know,
it's not worth our doubt, it's not worth our anxiety.
Actually examine it and acknowledge it and then work through
(41:50):
the stages of defiance so we can get to that
final act.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
And do you have any research it shows when you
do speak up in those situations of what the result.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Right, So when we do, when we are able to defy,
having just spoke about the tension there, when we are
able to defy, the interesting thing is that tension actually
melts away, it dissipates. If we try to ignore it.
It often stays with us with this kind of niggling pain,
and it sometimes grows. And so constantly complying in situations
(42:26):
that go against our values, like constantly bowing your head
to other people. If you're in that type of workplace,
it can really damage you physically, psychologically, emotionally. You know,
it can lead to burn out, chronic stress, inflammation, all
of those things. So if you can defy, you're leaving
a more leading, a more authentic, honest life, which is great,
(42:48):
with less tension, which is fantastic. I do have research
showing that if we know better and somebody tells us
to do something, we predict that the other person, we
can share the blame. The other person told me to
this like whole thing. You know, I was just following
orders or somebody else told me to. But if you
(43:09):
actually know better and then take something that goes against
your better judgment, people experience what I call the kicking
your self syndrome. They actually feel more regret, more responsible,
and more self blame than if they had made the
decision without somebody telling them to. So you can't wish
away your responsibility. You might think you can, So it's
(43:33):
best to embrace it and do what you think is
the right thing.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Okay, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Anything else that I didn't We could go on and on.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
I mean we could go Yeah, I love it. The
book is Defy.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
You can continue to go on and on and read
the book if someone's listening and wants to, and I'll
have the I'll have a link to the book in
the show notes and all that.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
But thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
This is such an important conversation and it's so it's
not so nuanced.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
I think we do it every day. I mean the
crew that's in here, I was telling them who's coming
and everything, and they go, yeah, I do that all
the time. Why do I do that?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
So it is just such an important subtlety in our
everyday life. And I love how you laid it out
and then also say it's a practice. You know, Yes,
it's a practice just like every personality.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yes, even if you see yourself as being very compliant,
you can learn the skill.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, you can learn the skill.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
I want to make that, yeah, define successible to everyone.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
And it's not negative and it's a positive thing.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
So we're going to start that today. Thank you. Thank
you so much, doctor Solf.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Thank you very much. This was a wonderful conversation, So
thank you for having me.
Hey, everyone, welcome to ten seconds to air. I'm your host,
Alita Gienne. Are you living according to your values? While
most of us would say yes, many of us are
not being honest. How many times do we comply with
a doctor who wants to run tests when we know
we don't need it, or we agree with a coworker
or boss when we know better.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Why do we do that?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And how can we say no in a world that
demands yes. My guest today is doctor Sunita Saw, a
renowned organizational psychologist and professor at Cornell University. She says
there are many factors that influence the choices we make.
She also says society puts an incredible amount of pressure
on us to comply. She joins me now to explain
(00:41):
why we say yes when our values are more in
line with no, and how we can start making decisions
that align with our values right now.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Goodbye, go live, go love forever.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Doctor Saw, Welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
The first rule for today is do not comply. If
I ask you a question, don't comply if you don't
want to.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Answer it, I'll answer a different question.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
You'll answer a different question. Excellent.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well, I'm looking forward to getting into this because I
know I am guilty of saying yes when I probably
mean no, and then later on.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I go why did I say that?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
So many of us continue to do that, and you
have the answer as to why, and you're going to
get us out of it, right.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I'm going to try, definitely try.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So what goes through your mind ten seconds before you
speak on this topic, meet with students, or perform in
some way.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So I always talk about the power of the pause,
especially if you need that just before you're deciding whether
or not to defy. So that's of ten seconds. The
power of the pause, I think is extremely useful in
many different situations where you just catch your breath and
decide how to react. Rather than it being an emotional response,
(02:14):
a need response, you can ask yourselves something about the situation.
So if it's in a situation where you want to defy,
you could ask yourself is this safe? Is this effective?
Or The first question I always recommend is does this
go against my values? Because that's when you want to
that's when you know that you have to defy.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
That takes so much control.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Yes it does, Yes it does, And That's why I
always say, definance is a practice. It's a skill that
we need to learn and practice over and over again.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, have you always been someone to question this?
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Or did this come up because you saw this happening
and you said, hey, wait a second, why how did
this originate for you?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
For me, I grew up with what I would call
a masterclass in compliance. So as a child, I was
known for being an obedient daughter and student. And my name,
Sanita actually in Sanskript, means good, and mostly I lived
up to that. So I did what I was told.
I complied, I got up when I was told to,
(03:17):
went to school on time, even had my haircut the
way my parents wanted me to. So these were the
messages that I received, not just from parents, but from
teachers and the community. And it was to be good,
and to be good often meant to obey, to be polite,
to fit in, to do as you're told, don't question authority.
And so we start equating compliance with being good and
(03:41):
defiance with being bad. And then in my research, actually
my first career was in medicine, mainly because of expectations.
I went to medical school and then I qualified and
worked as a physician, because again that was the expectation.
But I did take time out during my medical degree
to do an intercalated degree psychology, and it was there
(04:01):
I got introduced to some infamous work on authority to
obedience and why people comply, and I was fascinated by it,
just like you know, as a child, even though I
was so compliant, I was always fascinated by people who
could defy and how they could do it so much
easier than knew how to be themselves. They knew how
(04:22):
to speak up, and I really wanted to look at
that in more depth. And when I did, I discovered
that there's some real problems with being so compliant. And
that's when I started to discover that we actually need defiance,
and we've misunderstood what it means to defy.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, why is it that we comply so much? Because
I agree, when you're a kid, you want to comply, right,
You know that that will please your parents, and when
you're in a job, you comply will please your boss.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Exactly why how are we doing that? So we become
so socialized to comply, It always become a default response,
So our brain's become wired to comply. We get short
term rewards from that, and then when we get older,
it becomes really hard to defy. It feels very unnatural,
and so we actively resist defiance. And there's three key
(05:16):
reasons for why this happens. So the first one is
we feel this enormous pressure to go along with what
other people want. And I've really delved into that aspect,
this social pressure in my research and uncovered a psychological
process that I'm happy to talk about. But that's the
first one. The second one, we don't really understand what
(05:37):
compliance and defiance and consent really are, so we've misunderstood
all of those terms. And then the third one is
once we decide to defy, we don't actually know how.
We don't have the skill set to do it. Because
we've been trained so much in compliance, we don't actually
know how to defy, what things to say, how to
(05:58):
put it into action. So because of those three reasons,
we end up complying when we don't want to it. So, yes,
that's not really a.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Yes, go to the first one, and why is that happening? Like,
let's dive into these.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, absolutely, So the very first one this social pressure
to go along with other people, and it happens a lot.
So you can imagine that your boss asks you to
do something and you think it's the wrong way to go,
or that they even ask you to take a shortcut
and you don't think that's the right thing to do,
(06:35):
and yet everybody else is doing it. Then it becomes
very difficult to say no because if you say no,
it implies that they're either incompetent or unethical, or it
implies something negative about them. So my terminology for this
is insinuation anxiety. It's a distinct type of anxiety that
(06:57):
arises when we worry that our noncom clients with another
person's wishes is going to be interpreted as a signal
of distressed So it insinuates that the person is not
whom they appear to be or should be. So let
me describe some other situations that this can happen. Like,
I mean, it can happen in very small, steak situations,
such as you're at the hairdresser and they're saying, okay,
(07:19):
you know, you should really try this new cut and
you trust me, and they're cutting away and you're thinking, oh, no,
I'm not sure. I'm not sure, and you don't say
anything and they finish, you hate it, and then they
say isn't it great? And you're like, yes, thank you,
And if you're anything like me, you'll probably tip them
and walk out.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That is a great example.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
So it can be very small steaks like that, or
it could be even more serious problems. So when I
looked into the research, I found that once survey discovered
nine out of ten healthcare workers, most of them nurses,
did not feel comfortable to speak up when they saw
a colleague or a physician making an error. Oh wow,
(08:00):
now that is a situation. We really need people to
be speaking up. And it's also why co pilots might
not speak up to their pilots. In another study, about
fifty percent of crew members on commercial airlines felt uncomfortable
to say anything when they saw a mistake. So again
(08:21):
another life and death situation, And let me describe one
more since I'm a professor. There was a young female
professor that was asked to be on a committee for
assessing grants. And so they were reviewing grant applications and
deciding who would receive a grant and who wouldn't. And
(08:41):
she was on this committee with four senior men and
when it came to one particular applicant, and that applicant
was a black man. She said that the conversation changed
and it went more to gossip rather than looking at
the quality of the application or the credentials, And she
really wanted to say something, but she didn't. And when
(09:04):
she came out, she said the one thing that she
wanted to do was the thing that she couldn't do,
and that was to really say something and challenge the
fact and ask them questions as to should we go
to the credentials or just She just said that she
couldn't because it would imply something negative about the integrity
(09:26):
of the other people on the committee.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
So I have a question about that, because what you're
saying is if she spoke up, it would imply something
negative about the committee or for example, the hairdresser. If
you spoke up, you're saying that that means I don't
trust you. I sort of think, and I'm you know,
you're the expert on this. I also feel if I
were to speak up, that would maybe make people think
(09:52):
differently of me. Right, So that's the other stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
So that's also a possibility, is that people will think
you'd be difficult instructs in the harmony, and that's all
part of the same thing of insinuation anxiety, because we
have two selves. We have this ideal, independent self where
we want to do what we like, you know, we
want to express our agency and do whatever we want.
And then we have this other, interdependent self where we're
(10:19):
really concerned about harmony with the other person and we
want to be part of a group in society and
get on with everyone else. And these two ideal selves
that there's always a little bit of tension and you
can never reach one ideal or the other, and you
probably don't want to. Where insinuation anxiety comes into play
is that you do become very concerned about the harmony aspect,
(10:44):
but more so about offending the other person and implying
something negative about the other person. I mean, certainly we
feel with the defiance, people worry about defying because they
worry about negative consequences themselves, which could be a negative
judgment on themselves. But insinuation anxiety, the actual scientific term,
(11:06):
is the negative signal going to the other person. We
want to save their face. We don't want to bring
them down in the eyes of other Like even nurses
say if they see the physician doing something in front
of the patient, it's even more difficult. And so you
do this to save the integrity of the other person,
the face of the other person. But what's really interesting
(11:28):
about it is that you actually diminish some of your
own integrity in order to do that, And so this
becomes really quite a powerful force that keeps many of
us silent and compliant. Yes. And I've found it in
a range of different situations, in medical situations where people
have told me that they've been to the dentists and
(11:49):
dentisters recommended all these different treatments and they want to
say no, but they find it very difficult to say
no when they're in the back of a taxi cabin
that it's going the really long route and they want
to say something, but they can't. So many situations and
stories I've heard of people succumbing to insinuation anxiety and
(12:10):
not being able to speak up and say how they
really feel.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, yeah, Does it happen more for men versus women,
women versus men.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
So, in most of my studies, I found no gender effect,
apart from one where I found a really high gender effect,
and that was in a study I can call it
the ferry study, where we had a middle aged white
man approach passengers on a ferry going from Connecticut to
Long Island and asked them to take part in a
(12:40):
survey for five dollars in cash. Now, the survey was
really short, with innocuous questions such as is the ferry
running on time? Is very clean? I wasn't interested in
those answers. But once that survey was finished, the man
would say to people, well, I can give you the
five dollars as promised, or I can enter you into
(13:04):
this mystery lottery that pays out on average less than
five dollars. So you can imagine what most people chose.
So most people ninety two percent chose the five dollars cash.
So that is the preferred response of most passengers. But
when the man recommended I think you should go for
the lottery, twenty percent said okay, So we went up
(13:29):
from eight percent to twenty percent. Even more alarming was
another condition where the man would reveal an ulterior motive,
like a conflict of interest. So if he recommended the
lottery again and then said, but I should let you
know that I'm incentivized to recommend the lottery, because I
also receive a commission. If you take the lottery, then
(13:51):
compliance with this bad advice you could call it, goes
up to forty two percent.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Who why is that happening? Why are we doing that?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
So what I found was what was really surprising is
trust in the advice went down. The people didn't like
the man anymore. But it was the measure of insinuation anxiety.
How uncomfortable are you to reject the advice because I'm
uncomfortable to reject it because it implies that the man
could be biased, you know, or signals I don't trust him.
(14:24):
And that effect was purely driven by women. Men didn't
succumb to that in this condition, but this was women
did not want to signal they didn't trust the man's advice. Wow,
So that was really quite quite surprising. In other studies
I've done, I've found even higher levels of compliance, which
(14:46):
really is quite astounding when we think about where a
country that really prides ourselves on our independence and agency
and free thinking, that even when you make the advice
really obviously bad, people will still take it. So yes,
in that condition, we did find a gender effect. So
(15:08):
in some situations, certain groups of people are more affected
than other groups of people, and we should be aware
of that. Well women, you just well women in that situation. Yes, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
So I have a question about medical advice. You're a doctor,
you had patients. I think this happens a lot when
you go into the doctor. You have this as a patient,
You have this idea that they know better, and you
just kind of let things happen. You refer to this
(15:39):
in your book about a test that you took and
you knew you just you didn't want to take the test.
You knew you didn't need the test. I feel that
that happens very often and we just simply don't say
anything it happened to you. Is that because we're afraid
to tell the doctor, like you know, we are we
feeling like I'm questioning you exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I mean, it's such a shame.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
So the power dynamics are there, right, and that level
of insinuation anxiety is even stronger in this situation because
the doctor has expertise and they are supposed to put
your best interests at heart. They have, you know, do
no harm, you know, So in that case it becomes
even more difficult. When you're in a situation where there's
(16:28):
high expectations for integrity and benevolence and competence, then it
becomes very difficult to say you don't trust the other side.
And most of the time it's not an element of distrust, right.
You know, certainly, if you're going to see a doctor,
you might know certain things better about your body than
(16:49):
the doctor does. But even though I've heard so many
stories of you know, the doctor's always in a rush
and not really taking the time. And there's different ways
to approach advice in medicine, and you know, some people
really want the paternalistic type advice. Just tell me what
to do. I'm going to follow it. And we do
have high trust in our doctors, and it would be
a shame if we didn't, if that was completely lost.
(17:12):
But there are times when less it's more in medicine,
and they can also be an aspect of overdiagnosis and
overtreatment that's been well documented in the medical literature. Because
I was aware of that and also the differences between
how medicine is practiced in the UK and the US,
(17:32):
and because I'd worked in respiratory medicine or pulmonary medicine
you call it here, when they asked for something to
test to see if I had a blood clot in
the lungs, I knew I wasn't suffering from that kind
of of pain. I knew I had a distinct kind
of pain. So I did have the knowledge and understanding there.
But you're right, even though I had that knowledge and understanding,
it was so difficult for me to say no and
(17:53):
become the difficult patient and insinuate that they don't know
what they're doing or giving me bad advice. Because you're
in that type of situation where you're very vulnerable, and
it's the biggest context for having informed consent. This is
where informed consent should be at its ideal. And yet
(18:14):
even then in those situations, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Is it possible that as a patient, you've been on
the other side of this, so help us on that
side of it. Is it possible that the patient is
not giving enough information or I often see maybe a
patient comes in and just wants help, you know, just
doesn't give you all the clues, and therefore it's there's
maybe it goes to number two that you were talking
(18:38):
about about being misunderstood, or that there's not there's just
not enough information to make a good decision, and therefore
we end up down this kind of rabbit hole of one,
you know, compliant moment after another that maybe we didn't
intend to it, it wasn't the way we meant it
to be, but it just kept going in that direction
(19:00):
because of lack of information or being misunderstood.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
As a patient. Yes, yes, yeah, so I would say
in general, not just patients, but in many different situations
that once we start complying with something, it becomes harder
to then start to say no. A lot of defiance
comes early on, and so if we do start complying,
(19:26):
we really have to make that extra effort. And again
it could be because we don't understand what compliance and
defines some consent, So I can tell you so, compliance
and consent are often conflated with each other. They're assumed
to be the same thing, but they're actually fundamentally different.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Okay, so slow down just one second. So compliance and consent,
I'm just wrapping my head around that not the same thing,
Absolutely not. Okay, Okay, go ahead and define that now.
Compliance and consent.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
So compliance is something that's externally imposed, it's something that
we slide into. It could be an automatic yes, or
something we do reluctantly, so we go along with it,
and it's usually due to some kind of external pressure,
so a suggestion, advice, or even societal expectations. We comply
with those things. Consent is fundamentally different, and what I
(20:22):
do and lay out in the book is informed consent
in medicine. I take the definition of that and I
apply it to other important decisions we make in our lives.
And I think this is a really useful exercise that
we can do when we're thinking about consent. So for
true consent, we need five elements. Okay, So first of all,
(20:42):
we need capacity. So that's the mental capacity, so we
don't want to be too sick under the influence of
alcohol or drugs, and physicians are always supposed to examine
patients to make sure they have the capacity to make
an informed decision. So capacity is the first one. The
next one is knowledge, so you need information about the
(21:05):
decision you're about to make. But it's not just being
given the information. The third element is actually thoroughly understanding
that information, so you need a good grasp of all
the facts, the risks, the benefits, and the alternatives. So
that's capacity. Knowledge understanding. The fourth one is the freedom
(21:28):
to say no, because if you don't have the freedom
to say no, then it's merely compliance. It's not consent.
So you need to be able to say no. And
if all four of those elements are there, then the
fifth element is your authorization. You're deeply considered authorization of
yes if it's your consent or what I call your
(21:50):
true yes, or no, if it's your dissent or your
true no or defiance.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
This all sounds great.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
The question that comes to my mind is do we
all know what are real? What we really want, what
our values really are. It seems to me that it's
really easy to slide into a lot of things comply
you're you're a kid. You talk about being a kid,
being agreeable and complying, and so maybe we don't know
(22:17):
what we really want and so compliance is kind of easy.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Can sometimes be easier, but they are actually large costs
of compliance if we go against our values. And that
comes back to what is it that we really want?
So the very first step in my defiance compass is
to ask ourselves who am I? And that's a really
important question because we don't often think about what our
(22:42):
values are, unless unless you're in one of my classes,
and I have my executive students do this all the time,
like you know, what are your values? Like, think about
your values and write down and explain why your values
are really important because that makes you who you are.
And the reason one I ask them to write it
down and explain is because the research shows that your
(23:05):
intended behaviors are more likely to follow if you actually
write down your values, and clarifying our values actually leads
to a lower biological stress reaction. So we have lower
cortisol levels if we know who we are, and it's
really important for a number of reasons. Because another exercise
I do with my executive students is that I ask
(23:29):
them one of the values that I see year after
year after year with this exercise is integrity. So we
very much value integrity, like we don't want to be
called untrustworthy or anything along those lines or dishonest. So
when I ask my students before we do the values exercise,
(23:50):
to rate yourself on your level of honesty on a
scale of zero to one hundred relative to other people
in the room, where if you think you're the least
honest in the room, be zero and if you think
you're the most honest in the room, you would be
one hundred, and if you're about average, it would be fifty.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Oh, I can't wait to hear how this turns out.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, can you guess how it turns out?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Are people saying there are fifty I don't know.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
No, they're not. They're all saying they're about eighty five
or over. Like they rate themselves really highly on integrity. Yes,
I think I'm like really high. So hardly anyone says fifty,
and no one's going below fifty. I'm saying that, right, yeah, so,
And yet if fifty is the average, you would expect
(24:35):
half the class to be below and half the class
to be over this. But everybody thinks that they are
extremely honest, which might be great. But then what the
research show is that even at a young age, what
we think we are, what you believe your values to be,
is quite different from how you actually behave so a
study of over twenty thousand high school students. In that study,
(25:01):
nearly two thirds confessed to cheating on a test. Nearly
one third admitted to stealing something from a store in
the past year. I found that quite shocking. And then
the third one, which really broke my heart, was more
than eighty percent said that they had lied to a
(25:23):
parent about something significant. And these numbers are likely to
be conservative because.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
They're not going to tell you. Maybe they're not telling Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
And like the students even said like they'd lied on
at least one of the four.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Questions, chances are okay.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, So it's it's not unique to high school students.
What I've learned is that so for so many of us,
the distance between who we think we are and what
we actually do is enormous.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
And so that's a big deal.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
That's really a huge yeah, because to clean that up,
we need to decrease that gap between who we are
or who we aspire to be, or who we think
we are and how we actually behave. And this is
why I have this defiance compus, which starts off with
who am I? And then the last question in that
there's three questions, three main questions. The last question in
(26:14):
that defiance compass is what does a person like me
do in a situation like this? So, what does a
person like me if you're thinking about yourself with these
values integrity, fairness, compassion, equality, whatever your values are, what
does a person like me do in a situation like this,
then you can tap into your aspirational self because if
(26:35):
you are not speaking up when you see injustice or
in fairness or other aspects that you really value, if
the situation is going against your values and you don't
act like the person, what does a person like me
with these values doing the situation like that, then it's
going to change who you are. So it leads back
into who am I? And so that first step of
(26:57):
really clarifying what's important to us and why is very important.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
It's such a great template to be thinking about. But
I have to say when I open the book, the
first story you tell is the George Floyd story, which
really speaks to exactly what you're doing in the research,
and you talk about the other officers that were also
holding down George Floyd. And what makes me think about
(27:28):
is that when things happen, are we able to ask
ourselves the right questions or what should our process be
to get ourselves too straight to our values so that
we can make the right decision about the person that
(27:48):
we are or that we want to be in every
situation right exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And that's like a horrific situation that rookie cops found
themselves in. Yeah, and here this is why it becomes
really important to prepare for those situations well before the
moment of crisis. We can't if we're surprised by something,
that's always going to disable our defiance because we don't
know what's going on. We freeze, we fail to put
(28:15):
our values into action. So if we're not ready for
that moment when it comes an it's really hard even
if you have these values to act in alignment with them.
So how can we do that? Well, some of the
stories that follow that one of other police officers and
how they've behaved is actually some of them were trained
(28:37):
during the time that that incident with George Floyd. They
were trained during that time and they had in their heads,
I don't want to ever be in that type of situation.
What am I going to do about it? And this
is what we can do, because one of the ways
to train for defiance is to make it at practice
and have this action plan. And we can anticipate a
(29:00):
lot of the situations in which defiance is requiet because
we've been in our workplace. We know this particular professor
is going to say something inappropriate in the next meeting,
because he said it in pretty much every meeting that
we've had. We know we're going to get asked to
do certain things. And as one young police officer said
(29:21):
to me, I knew this was going to be a
tough job, and I knew I was going to get
asked to do unethical things. I was going to be
asked to look the other way. So he was prepared
and he had a mentor. So it's not just about
intellectually knowing. So even in the police academy where it
says if you see something wrong to speak up, that's
not enough. Intellectually we know that, but we don't have
(29:42):
the behavioral training. Our brains are still wired to comply.
So we need to anticipate the most common situations where
this will happen. They're often more predictable than we think.
Then we need to visualize it. We kind of picture
it first, and then we need to practice by scripting
out and role playing, so our bodies get used to that.
(30:04):
Our ears get used to us saying defiant words, and
our mouths get used to saying them, and our ears
get used to hearing them. So we need to repeat
that and practice it so we can be ready when
the moment arise. And there is a wonderful quote by
a Greek poet that says, under duress, we don't rise
(30:25):
to the level of our expectations. We fall to the
level of our training. So that is why we need
that's the only thing that's going to rewire neural pathways
so we can be defiant in the moment.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Are there other external factors that happen in that process
in determining what we are going to comply with and
not conmply with, whether it's emotional or religious or you know,
one of the other factors that might come into play
that get in the way of us staying true door
of a.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Well, there's the external pa factors. There's many, like different
types of social factors so explained insinuation anxiety as one
psychological process. There's also the fear of consequences, and of
course like how socialized are you? Are you part of
a particular work institution that has norms for compliance? Are
(31:22):
you part of a religious affiliation that also has expected roles?
So most of us are part of groups and affiliations
and institutions where the workplace might be for example, very
expressive or it might be non expressive. So the environment
definitely takes does have a big effect on us, and
(31:45):
if we're in that type of situation. So you can
look at Rosa Parks's famous no on the bus that
really had it changed a lot. It was very effective,
but if you think about it, her no was preceded
by hundreds of moments of compliance. She complied with segregation
laws many times before until she did her famous no,
(32:08):
And we often comply before our no, and that's okay.
You know, there's situations where we comply because the costs
are too great or we know it's not going to
be effective. But some people like, was it safe for
Rosa Parks to defy on the bus that day? Not really?
I mean, yeah, she was receiving death threats and other things,
(32:28):
and yet for her, she was really connected with her
values and on that day she thought it would be effective.
So we can't just ask is it safe is it effective?
Which are the two questions. We do need to consider those,
of course, but we can also rationalize that it will
never be safe or never be effective enough. So we
need to ask it's a very personal question to uds
(32:49):
is it safe enough for me? Will it be effective
enough for me knowing that some people will take on
great costs to stand up for what they believe in.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, I think that some people or may listen and go,
you know, I have a boss or I have someone
at work that I just I don't agree with. They
don't they're not in ligne with my values. At the
same time, you need the job and if you question
too much or then so how do you handle that?
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Yeah? So this comes aligne along with you know, the
defiance calculus. So is it safe? And safety isn't not
just physical safety, it's also financial safety, psychological safety, there's
other things that we need we need to consider. And
one of my students was telling me about when he
got his first job and he had his wife, they
(33:41):
just had a child, who was very excited about it,
and then he discovered corruption at the top levels. What
was he going to do because he needed the job
and he needed the financial security, So he did look
the other way and hope that somebody else was going
to speak up about this. So there are many costs.
But whistleblowers, even though there's protections for whistle blowers, often
(34:03):
then there's not enough protection for whistle blowers. So these
become very individual decisions of I can't defy in the
way that I would like to right now, and so
I'm going to consciously comply, which is very different from
the type of compliance I was talking about that we're
wired for that we've fall in. Its conscious compliance is
(34:23):
when we have all five elements for consent, we have
the capacity, we have the knowledge, the understanding, the freedom
to say no, and we could authorize, but we think
the costs are too great right now. So we're going
to consciously comply, not forever, but we're going to defer
defiance to another time.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
That's an interesting point because I also don't want to
beat myself up over complying when I think that it's
the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Oh right, yeah, absolutely absolutely. So you want to consent, yes.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yes, and when this all works out perfectly, when you
truly understand when you go through that with your students,
the who am I? And then and then what does
this uh? When you go go through the three questions
what does it look like? How should it look in
the perfect world? Once we get to where we need
to be with with asking ourselves those questions, yes.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
So who am I really taps into your values. So
you need to know what your values are. And here
we're very explicit by what we mean by value. So
it's not goals, it's not moral convictions such as homosexuality
is wrong or abortion is wrong, because those things can
be defined divisive and there's more than one answer, there's
at least two right, and so it's subjective by values,
(35:41):
they really come down to sort mostly single words, but
very powerful words like integrity. There's no right or wrong, integrity, benevolence, compassion, empty.
These are the values that I see time and time again.
They seem almost universal and they're very powerful if we
can act in alignment with them day after day. It's
(36:04):
what shapes your behavior on a daily basis. So who
am I? And then the second question is what type
of situation is this? And that's where you're asking is
this safe? Is it effective? And you're really looking outwards
at the environment and asking those questions. And then the
last question what does a person like me do in
a situation like this? And then that is tapping into
(36:26):
two things. That's your responsibility, so connecting with your values
and who you're responsible for. Is it yourself? Is it
your family? Is it your community, Who is it that
you're responsible for in order to live in alignment with
your values and also having the ability the skill set,
have you practice for it, because if you haven't, then
it becomes intention but not behavior.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I love those questions.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
So if people want to who are listening, want to
start today and say how do I go about doing this?
I've been rolling through life and I thought I was
complying or incenting or defying, or I thought I was
doing it all right, But really I haven't really thought
much about this, and they would like to start implementing
their values. Would you suggest those three quests begin there?
(37:12):
Or do you have a different starting point?
Speaker 3 (37:15):
I think begin there if you have time to before
a situation is start there. Start with who I am.
That's where it always that's the beginning, is to really
know who you are and what do you stand for?
Speaker 2 (37:29):
And then from there, let me say two things.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Right that I would love people to be able to do. Is,
first of all, have this mindset shift about what we
think about defiance. So many people think of defiance as
being really loud or bold, or violent or angry or aggressive.
They have a very negative connotation of it, or they
might think it's superhuman in an out of reach, it's
(37:53):
something heroic like Rosa Parks, and I want to tell
them that you don't have to be brave or a superhero.
You don't have to have a personality or be larger
than life. Is actually a practice, not a personality, So
you can be compliant one day defiant the next day.
It isn't just for the brave or the extraordinary. It's
available and it's necessary for all of us. So we
(38:14):
can define in our own unique way. There's no particular
way that this is the right way to define. We
can find out like some people will do it by protests,
in by marching, other people will do it by writing
a letter. There's many different ways that you can define
with far less stress and ants that we have to
that we usually have. And that really comes with asking
(38:35):
ourselves when we're in the situation, does this situation go
against my values? And we're aiming for this values driven defiance,
not knee jerk reactions. And when I said that, we've
misunderstood what it means to defy. This is why I
came to this revelation. We actually need this new definition
(38:56):
for defiance. Right, So whereas the old definition. Well, the
Oxford English Dictionary definition is to challenge the power of
someone else boldly and openly. And I grew up in
the UK, so I'm not want to normally disagree with
the Oxford English Dictionary, but in this situation, I think
it's way too narrow and it doesn't honor our agency.
(39:17):
And my definition of defiance is simply to act in
accordance with your true values when there is pressure to
do otherwise. So it becomes this proactive positive voice in
society because if you think about it, all our individual
acts of compliance, of consent, of defiance, they create the
society that we live in, and that it affects our
(39:39):
lives at workplaces, our communities. And that's why I'm very
passionate that we understand truly what.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
It means to defind right. I love your definition. I
hope I hope the Oxford Dictionary takes it.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
And yes, I hope so too.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Anything I didn't ask you about that you wanted to
just mention before before we wrap.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Up again, when like the situations that I spoke about
that are life and death situations like the rookie cops,
the nurses, the co pilots, even when it's not life
and death. We often keep silent when something is wrong
and we have that kind of tension, and we need
to ask ourselves, you know, if you think compliance is
(40:22):
being good and definance is being bad, that it's sometimes
bad to be good, Like what do we actually sacrifice
by always trying to be so compliant? And we can
really tap into that tension that we feel, Like I
often feel tension when this situation is asking me of something.
(40:45):
There's expectations are going in against what I think is
the right thing to do, and when we're in that situation,
we often feel some type of tension. It might manifest
in different ways for different people. Like for some people
it's their voice constricting, or their throat constricting, their mouth
getting dry, getting a headache. For me, I feel unease
in my stomach. You know, that's something that doesn't feel
(41:05):
right here, And I differentiate that from a gut feel.
This is about when there's two forces colliding what you
think is the right thing to do and what somebody
else is expecting for you to do. That's actually the
first stage of defiance because if you didn't feel tension,
then you have given all your power away to someone else,
(41:26):
and so you would just go along with it. Yeah,
that's fine. But the fact that you actually feel tension
means that you have some agency, you have some power,
that is your strength. Just don't sort of try and
sweep it away that you know, ignore it like what
other people like we often do. Right that you know,
it's not worth our doubt, it's not worth our anxiety.
Actually examine it and acknowledge it and then work through
(41:50):
the stages of defiance so we can get to that
final act.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
And do you have any research it shows when you
do speak up in those situations of what the result.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Right, So when we do, when we are able to defy,
having just spoke about the tension there, when we are
able to defy, the interesting thing is that tension actually
melts away, it dissipates. If we try to ignore it.
It often stays with us with this kind of niggling pain,
and it sometimes grows. And so constantly complying in situations
(42:26):
that go against our values, like constantly bowing your head
to other people. If you're in that type of workplace,
it can really damage you physically, psychologically, emotionally. You know,
it can lead to burn out, chronic stress, inflammation, all
of those things. So if you can defy, you're leaving
a more leading, a more authentic, honest life, which is great,
(42:48):
with less tension, which is fantastic. I do have research
showing that if we know better and somebody tells us
to do something, we predict that the other person, we
can share the blame. The other person told me to
this like whole thing. You know, I was just following
orders or somebody else told me to. But if you
(43:09):
actually know better and then take something that goes against
your better judgment, people experience what I call the kicking
your self syndrome. They actually feel more regret, more responsible,
and more self blame than if they had made the
decision without somebody telling them to. So you can't wish
away your responsibility. You might think you can, So it's
(43:33):
best to embrace it and do what you think is
the right thing.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Okay, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Anything else that I didn't We could go on and on.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
I mean we could go Yeah, I love it. The
book is Defy.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
You can continue to go on and on and read
the book if someone's listening and wants to, and I'll
have the I'll have a link to the book in
the show notes and all that.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
But thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
This is such an important conversation and it's so it's
not so nuanced.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
I think we do it every day. I mean the
crew that's in here, I was telling them who's coming
and everything, and they go, yeah, I do that all
the time. Why do I do that?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
So it is just such an important subtlety in our
everyday life. And I love how you laid it out
and then also say it's a practice. You know, Yes,
it's a practice just like every personality.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yes, even if you see yourself as being very compliant,
you can learn the skill.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, you can learn the skill.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
I want to make that, yeah, define successible to everyone.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
And it's not negative and it's a positive thing.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
So we're going to start that today. Thank you. Thank
you so much, doctor Solf.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
Thank you very much. This was a wonderful conversation, So
thank you for having me.
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