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.In today's conversation, Shankar mentioned our episode with Timur Kuran, in which we talk about self-censorship and a concept called "preference falsification." You can find that episode here. And if you'd like to try Hidden Brain+ and hear our bonus conversation with Sunita Sah, you can sign up for a free trial at apple.co/hiddenbrain or support.hiddenbrain.org. Thanks for listening!
Chapter 1: What are the moral dilemmas discussed in this episode?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar 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? 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?
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? 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. 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.
Why we silence ourselves and how we can align our words and actions with our values, this week on Hidden Brain. 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.
It's wonderful to be here. Thank you.
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?
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 health care service in the U.S., having moved from the U.K., 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.
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Chapter 2: Why do we often fail to speak up against authority?
Jason refuses to be a part of the strip search. He hands the phone back to Donna Summers and returns to the kitchen.
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 him, call your fiancé.
Donna Summers asks her fiancé 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.
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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?
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? 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 and he says, you keep that apron wrapped around you. And he hands the phone straight away back to Donna Summers and he says, something's not right about this. This is wrong.
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.
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Chapter 3: How did Sunita Sah's personal experiences shape her research?
Of course.
One in four of them said that they had lied about a question on the survey.
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.
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.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, go to apple.co slash 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 slash hiddenbrain or support.hiddenbrain.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.
Thank you so much.
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