Kurt Nelson 0:00 Tim, so let me ask you something. Tim, when was the last time you said yes to something that in the moment every fiber of your being was screaming, no, no, no. Tim Houlihan 0:24 No, okay, that brings up, actually, some bad memories for me. Kurt Nelson 0:29 And no, I didn't mean to that bad. I'm sorry. Tim Houlihan 0:33 So I can't think of a business example right now, but I have a very, very clear example from my personal life, and that was the wedding ceremony for my first marriage. Oh, I know I had this really, really strong internal struggle with getting married that day. It wasn't just jitters. It was like a really strong connection to a very bad feeling. I knew that it was a bad idea to say I do, because it was very clear to me that it wasn't going to be the best decision for me. Kurt Nelson 1:06 Oh, man, oh, is that just a crappy way to start out a podcast, though it's real. Yeah, it's real, but I'm sorry to bring up then drag up those nasty memories, I just thought you'd say, Oh yeah, I made this business decision where I I went. I said yes, and I really wanted to say no, but no this you said yes on a marriage, okay. Well, with that, our guest today argues that when we say yes to something we would really be better off saying no to. It's not that we're we aren't just weak, unethically or morally confused. It's that well, we're just too well trained in compliance, this idea that we are just going along with everything. And Sunita is an organizational psychologist and a physician whose research explores why good people comply when they shouldn't, like what you might have done there, and how we can learn to say no when it really matters. Tim Houlihan 2:16 Yeah, so sandita's book defy the power of no in a world that demands Yes, has been so popular, it's recently been released in paperback with a new subtitle, how to speak up when it matters, and Holy Hannah. I wish I would have read this before I got married for the first time. Okay, but it also makes a lot of sense to us, because it's not just about speaking up all the time. It's about choosing the right times to give voice to your concerns, and the fact that it's being released in paperback really tells us something that how much seen his message is resonating with a lot of people right now. Kurt Nelson 2:53 Yeah, so in my conversation, since Tim had a sudden internet outage at his home, yeah, again, you should have said no to that, but there you go. So Sunita and I dove into some really cool conversation, including conversation about Stanley Milgram shock experiments and conflict of interest disclosures that actually not what we would think can increase compliance in not such a good way. And we also talked about something Sunita calls insinuation, anxiety that subtle but powerful, feel fear that if we say no, we're implying someone else's untrustworthy or incompetent or biased. And that's that's powerful. Tim Houlihan 3:41 It's really tricky stuff, isn't it? So all of this explains why we nod along with mechanics and doctors and bosses that they're authority figures that we tend to rely on for information, even when we disagree, and sometimes we go along with friends when we really shouldn't. Yes, I Not now. Kurt, not now. Oh, no, this isn't a book about rebellion for rebellion sake. Kurt, Sunita reframes defiance as something that's deeply pro social her definition is simple and powerful. Defiance is acting in accordance with your true values when there's pressure to do otherwise. Yeah. Kurt Nelson 4:30 So Sunita and I explored her five stages of defiance, starting with that uncomfortable tension that you get in your stomach, moving through vocalizing concern and ultimately reaching action. And she makes a really good case that defiance isn't a personality trait, that it is a practice. It's a skill. It's something that we can all train ourselves to be better at. Absolutely. Tim Houlihan 4:55 She also introduces the idea of a true yes and a true. No and why compliance is not the same thing as consent. I want to say that again, compliance is not the same thing as consent, and if you've ever wondered why disclosing a conflict of interest can sometimes make people more compliant instead of less, Kurt and Sanita will unpack Kurt Nelson 5:16 that too. Welcome to behavioral grooves. I'm Kurt Nelson Tim Houlihan 5:20 and I'm Tim Houlihan, and we encourage you to sit back and relax with a warm pour of healthy defiance and enjoy Kurt's conversation with Sunita SA, Kurt Nelson 5:30 yeah, yeah, that's good. Kurt Nelson 5:41 Sunita SA, welcome to behavioral grooves. Sunita Sah 5:44 It's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. Kurt Nelson 5:47 Well, we are excited, or I am excited to have you, as people probably hear from the intro, Tim wasn't able to join us. He had some internet kind of shenanigans that were going but Sunita, regardless of that, we are going to start with our famous Speed Round four short questions with some hopefully, maybe not hopefully, just some answers that you get. So the very first one is, would you prefer to learn a new language or a new instrument? Sunita Sah 6:16 Can I say both? I would love to. I'm being defiant already. There you go. I would love to know lots of different languages and just you know, be able to join in conversations, but I would probably find it more difficult to learn a new language than a new instrument, because I already know how to play the flute I learned when I was young, so I already know how to read music, and that's the language, right? So you already have the language. So learning a new instrument would probably progress a lot faster than learning a new language, unless I went to that country and absorbed myself in it, which is the best way to learn, right? Kurt Nelson 7:00 I think, I mean, I know lots of people that that's what they do. They'll go if, even if it's just for a three week immersive component, in order to really learn that language, I am the same with you. I would love to have both if I could, because I don't, I don't know any instrument, and I don't know any other language but English, which is pretty, pretty sad to say. But all right, before we go and dig down and all the issues that Kurt has, well, let's go on to the next question. So coffee or tea? Which would you prefer? Sunita Sah 7:32 That's an easy one for me. Definitely tea. Kurt Nelson 7:37 You are a tea person. I Sunita Sah 7:39 am a tea drinker. Through and Through. I grew up in England, of course, so I love Earl gray tea. In fact, my flatmate at university introduced me to Earl Gray, and I haven't stopped drinking it since then. So what did someone said to me? What Earl gray all day? Kurt Nelson 7:58 Earl gray all day? I like that, yeah, and, oh, go ahead. Sunita Sah 8:03 Whenever I go, like, if I'm like, thinking about a new job, one of the main things I check out is like, do they have tea as well as coffee? And can they make it well? Kurt Nelson 8:15 Can they make it well? Are you very particular about, like, how long it needs to steep and all those Sunita Sah 8:22 I am just if you go to a restaurant, I would like them to use boiling water and put the tea bag in immediately. Instead of coming out with lukewarm water and a tea bag in hand, Kurt Nelson 8:36 we have had guests who like they are very particular about how long it goes and exactly how the various different components of it. And I've always been, I am a equal opportunity on coffee and tea. I love both of them, but I've not been indoctrinated. I think, like many of our English guests have, so I think there's, I Sunita Sah 9:00 love my tea, I really do. And now hotels are moving the tea and coffee into the lobby, which is, you know, really awful for me, because I like have a cup of tea first thing in the morning, and it's like, I need to get dressed and go down to get my cup of tea. That doesn't work. Kurt Nelson 9:18 All right. Next question, would you rather live in a 35 year old body with a 95 year old mind, or live in a 95 year old body with a 35 year old mind? Sunita Sah 9:31 Wow. I mean, does the 95 year old mind is it still sharp and it has all the wisdom Kurt Nelson 9:41 you can, you can maybe make that determination. Sunita Sah 9:44 I'm deciding on that right the best mind, with all the wisdom and the knowledge of a 95 year old, no decay whatsoever in did you say 35 year old body? Kurt Nelson 9:57 35 year old body, yeah, yeah, that's really. Be interesting. Again, we get lots of people on those that question, and it comes down to, well, you know, how fit is that 95 year old person? Can I still get around? And am I mobile versus, you know, the other, you know, way around of all that. So, all right, last of our speed round questions, Sunita, are, are the risk of defiance greater for those who do not hold power than for those who do? In general? Sunita Sah 10:29 In general, I would say yes. And you know power, it depends how you define power, but those in more dominant positions, more status, more power. Definitely, the risks are higher for those that don't have it, Kurt Nelson 10:46 yeah, yeah. And we'll get into that, because I think that was an interesting part of your book. And so we are talking with Sunita saw about her new book, defy the power of no in a world that demands Yes. Fantastic read, by the way, as our listeners know, when we have lots of little dog earmarks in the book, it means that it's a really good book. So lots and lots of those, lots of underlines as we're going through. I wanted to start with this. You open the book with a, I don't know if it's a new definition, but a definition of the word defy, and you have it as to act in accordance with your true values when there is pressure to do other words. So a Can you talk a little bit about that and like expand upon that for people? And then, how did you come to that? What was that, that whole component there? Sunita Sah 11:39 I think I from childhood, I've been fascinated by compliance and defiance and what that single powerful word defy actually means, and that's because I had a master class in compliance growing up. You know, my name, Sunita, even means good in Sanskrit, my dad told me when I was little and I tried to live up to it, because what does being good actually mean? It means it means being polite, doing as you're told, obeying, listening to teachers, all of those things. So we start equating compliance with being good and defiance with being bad, and that got me thinking quite a lot. And when I saw some of the problems with compliance, it made me wonder, is it sometimes bad to be so good, and what do we actually sacrifice by being so good, so compliant all the time? And after lots of research and observation, I came to this revelation that we have misunderstood what it means to defy because we think Defiance is such a negative connotation to it, we don't speak up when it matters. We don't we go along with things that we shouldn't, and we don't say no when we should, and so that is what led to this new definition of defiance that going against the Oxford English Dictionary, even though I grew up in the UK, where they say Defiance is challenging the power of another person boldly and openly, I think this idea of confrontation or aggression or it being loud and bold, it doesn't need to be like that. Defiance is simply acting in accordance with your values, especially when there is pressure to do otherwise. And so we reframe it from this kind of negative, rare and risky to something that's actually positive and meaningful and accessible and even pro social. Kurt Nelson 13:46 That's what I loved about that the RE deficient defining of that is that you took what would be considered typically a negative component as you talked about and you reframed it to that positive aspect of it. And I think you know, the more that we can understand that and take that to heart, it makes that defiance less. I mean, maybe you were thinking about this when you were doing that, but it makes it less of difficult for people, because now this is a pro positive thing that I am doing in order to move, you know, the social, the connections, the whatever it is forward in a way that's positive. Is that something, yeah, absolutely. Sunita Sah 14:27 That's what this reframing is really doing. It's redefining all those negative connotations we have of defiance into something that's can be incredibly positive, not just for us, but for the people around us, and that's why I wrote the book, really was to make defiance a positive aspect and something that's accessible to us all. Fantastic. In the Kurt Nelson 14:52 book, we'll get into some of the different components that you did, but you brought up a lot of research from Stanley Milgram, and this famous she. Shock experiments. And I found it really interesting because you took a different slant than what I've seen most of the people who have written about it. You looked at this from this perspective of, again, defiance and compliance and various different things. But for our listeners, could you quickly overview Stanley's experiments? I know most people are probably familiar with it, so just a big picture overview for those but then what do we need to take away from those experiments when you think about defiance? Sunita Sah 15:34 Sure, so Stanley Milgram, he conducted these experiments in the early 1960s because he was really interested in investigating the claim that from Nazis in World War Two, that we were just following orders. And he wanted to see whether this was going to be a psychological reality or not. And so he advertised for people to come in to take part in an experiment which was really kind of a learning experiment or a memory experiment, and to see whether sort of giving people some kind of physical harm would increase their learning. So community members came in, and they were all sort of designated to be the teacher, and they were going to read out word pairs to someone else that they thought was another participant, but it was actually an actor that was called the learner. So they met the learner. The learner gets strapped into something that looks like an electric chair. They mention some kind of heart condition and whether it's safe, and then the teacher gets led to another room where in front of them there's a big instrument, and they can see that they have to give electric shocks to the other persons, starting at 15 volts and then increasing in 15 volt increments all the way up to 450 volts, which is labeled X, X, X, danger, severe shock. So it's very clear that this could be perhaps harmful to the learner. Now the teacher has to sit there and read out these word pairs. If the learner gets it wrong, then they start giving the shot, moving up if they object, and their learner does object, them himself, so he will shout out that he's had enough. He wants to get out. He'll thump on the wall, he'll mention his heart condition, and at certain point he'll stop speaking. And so that kind of silence could indicate many different things, and Milgram was interested to see whether at what point people would defy so be the defiant subject and stop listening to the experimenter telling them to go on, or would they be obedient? So even now, you can see this little bit of reframing of defiance as being a good thing, right, not causing harm to another person. And the experimenter had four prompts, so if the teacher did object, they would give prompts such as, please go on. The experiment requires you to continue. It's absolutely essential that you continue. And the last one is, you have no choice. You must go on. And the prediction from psychiatrists was that most wouldn't continue. After about 150 bolts, maybe one in 1000 would go all the way up to 450 volts. But what he found was that every single participant pulled the lever for 150 volts, every single participant pulled it for 300 volts, and 65% went all the way up to the deadly 450 volts. Kurt Nelson 18:40 Yeah, it's quite interesting from that perspective, that the prediction by Stanley himself, as well as many of the other researchers, were there's no way possible that these people are going to go beyond this to a certain degree, outside of, you know, the occasional psychopath that we would get in as part of this experiment, and that wasn't what they found. And that, I think a that was one of the big kind of insights that we have. But I think you also brought an interesting piece in here, which is that you know that the people who were doing these experiments, who were the subjects in this the the teachers. So to say they they didn't do. They didn't just readily go up to 450 there was this hesitation. There was this, is you noted that they said, What was it here? You know, you noted these obedient people were trying to defy but they didn't quite get there. That was a quote from the book, and I could you elaborate on that, because I thought that was just really well said. Sunita Sah 19:50 Yeah, absolutely. So what? Milgram, yeah, he was surprised. He even referred to these participants as moral imbeciles. He couldn't believe. Believe that so many went up to 450 volts. But he also noticed that a large proportion of the participants exhibited some sort of nervous laughter. They were sweating, they were swearing, they were objecting. And so these were not people who were in what Milgram calls the agentic state, which is where you've abdicated all your responsibility, you've given it to someone else, and you're just acting in accordance to what they want. These are the people that actually felt quite a lot of tension. They didn't want to be doing this, but they didn't actually know how to defy they didn't have that skill set. And so I was really fascinated by not just the fact that 65% went up to 450 balls, but about the people that actually defied What was it about them that allowed them to be able to say no and continue to say no over those four prompts to to get out of harming another person. Kurt Nelson 21:00 So Sunita, what do you what did you learn from those people that were that did resist, that did Defy? What were the insights that you gained? Sunita Sah 21:11 So there were a couple of people that stood out for me. One was someone who was very knowledgeable about engineering, and knew what these volts would actually do to another person. It also actually lived through World War Two. And so he was fascinated by this, after he learned what the experiment was about, and he stopped somewhere around, I believe 200 volts, or 220 volts or something. And he he was taking responsibility. He managed to stop because he was saying, I know what this harm is going to do to another person. So he had the knowledge and understanding at that point and and he was able to defy the other person that was able to defy that stood out for me was a priest, so somebody who had spent a very long time thinking about their values of not harming another person, and he very much treated, I think, the experimenter, like someone who did not understand or get it. So even though he was stuttering, and when the experimenter said something like, You have no choice. You must go on, he responded like, well, maybe in Russia, but not here. Then he actually said that he was going to take orders from the learner. So he said, well, this person is saying he doesn't want me to do it, so I'm going to listen to him. And then later on, he invoked God as the higher authority that you know I should not be harming another person. And so those aspects I found really fascinating. What is it that allows people to defy So knowledge and understanding of what you're doing is obviously key, and then this connection to your values, to what really matters to you, and then having that skill set, that ability to defy, all of those things coming together. And if we haven't been trained for defiance, if you've been socialized for compliance, the way that I was, you need to train for defiance. You need to practice that skill. Because when you find yourself in a moment of crisis, you're not going to have it right then. So we have to practice long before that moment of crisis. Kurt Nelson 23:26 And I love the part that you talk about, we have to train for defiance. We have to we have to teach ourselves the ability to how we can do that and do that well. And hopefully we can talk about that later. But I wanted to get in to a little bit more about some of the concepts that you talk about, because you talk about this concept of true no in the book, as as well as a true Yes. So can you define what you mean by true no and true Yes, and explain to our listeners what what you're trying to convey there? Absolutely. Sunita Sah 23:58 So we've redefined defiance so far, and so one of the main reasons why we resist defiance, that I've found is that we don't really understand what compliance and defiance are. So now we have a new definition for defiance. What about compliance? Now, if you think about what compliance is, it's actually very different from consent. So having worked and trained as a physician, I was very aware of what informed consent in medicine is and why it's different from compliance, compliance. So we often conflate the two, but they're actually radically different. So compliance is really going along with something like something external, in the environment, order a suggestion or even societal expectations, whereas consent is very different, and it requires five elements for consent, and those five elements are first of all capacity, so you need to have the cognitive capability. Ability to understand the decision, so you're not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, you're not too sick, you have the capacity so just like that, 95 year old, right? That the brain is intact, and the second one is knowledge. So you need the information to be able to make an informed choice, so you have to be given that information. But it's not enough just to have the information. You need a thorough understanding of that information. So you need to know the risks, the benefits, the alternatives, so you have capacity knowledge understanding. The fourth one is the freedom to say no, because if you don't have the freedom to say no, then that's merely compliance. It's not consent. And if you have those four elements, the fifth elements is your authorization. So consent, or what I call your true Yes, is a thoroughly considered authorization that's an active expression of your deeply held values. So it's something that's coming from within, not externally imposed. And actually, Defiance is the same thing. It requires the same five elements. So it's just the other side of the coin of consent, and that's your true No. And again, those five elements must be present. Kurt Nelson 26:17 It's interesting when you talk about that, because you talk about the understanding part. And you talked about the gentleman in the in the Milgram experiments, who was the engineer and understood the voltage and various different things, probably better than most people did. So it was a component of that that probably helped in that is that, where would you take it to that level? Sunita Sah 26:40 Oh, yes, absolutely. So that aspect, if you don't have the knowledge and understanding, then you don't know whether that's your true or no or not, right, because you could be acting on false information or not enough information, which is a problem these days to really figure out, like, what our true yes and our true no is because, you know, it comes back to what information do we trust, how much knowledge do we have, and do we truly understand it? Kurt Nelson 27:05 Yeah, and I think it's a really important part for all of our listeners to be thinking about, because, you know, too often we get that surface level and so it's presented to us. I mean, again, Milgrim and his experiments didn't go into a deep explanation around what the voltage meant or what that would do to a person's body. And so you had to make some assumptions about that. And I think we often do that ourselves, and that makes it more difficult to either have either that true, yes, as you talked about, that consent, or that true? No. Of saying, No, this is, this is against, you know, the values that that I hold true is that, again, you know, don't want to put words in your mouth. But would that be, would you align with that? Or am I off base there? Yes. Sunita Sah 27:54 I mean, what Milgram did, which was quite clever, was that, you know, he did have the participants, the teachers, sort of feel the 15 volts. So they could, you know, and it does give like a bit of a sting, you know, kind of ouch kind of thing. So they could imagine what 450 volts would be. And there were other signals, such as the learner going quiet, which also indicates several things, and the fact that we mentioned like there was so much tension that they had, they knew that they probably didn't want to continue, and yet they couldn't, they couldn't stop. But yes, the engineer who had was very definite about his knowledge and the understanding probably gave more confidence to be able to defy and this aspect we're going again to the confidence and the ability and more knowledge and understanding only increases that confidence. Kurt Nelson 28:56 Hey, grooves, quick break from the conversation to talk about something we don't bring up enough on the show. Tim Houlihan 29:02 Yeah, that's right, when we're not behind the mic, we're working with organizations to apply behavioral science in ways that actually move the needle for leaders, teams and whole cultures. Kurt Nelson 29:13 So whether it's designing smarter incentives, boosting engagement, setting goals that actually stick, or helping teens navigate change. We bring real science to real workplace challenges, Tim Houlihan 29:25 and we don't just talk theory. Our approach blends research backed insights with hands on strategies that drive results. Now we've seen small behavioral shifts lead to big wins in Fortune 500 companies and scrappy startups, and even in mission driven nonprofits, yeah, Kurt Nelson 29:42 and we bring the same curiosity, creativity and care to our client work that we bring to every episode of the show, Tim Houlihan 29:49 really, I think people might want more than what we bring to the show. Kurt Nelson 29:54 You you probably have a point there. You're probably right. Tim Houlihan 29:59 Okay, so. Will bring more care and creativity to our work with you and your teams than what we do on the show. Kurt Nelson 30:06 Yes, more care. So. So if you're ready to build stronger motivation, better team dynamics, and maybe even make your workplace a little more groovy, Tim Houlihan 30:15 yeah, reach out to us. Grab us on LinkedIn or Facebook, or just drop us a line. We'd love to help you and your team find your groove. Kurt Nelson 30:28 One of the most fascinating parts that I thought of for myself for the book was you do a you did some work on conflict of interest and how that makes us feel, but also the impact that it has on our compliance in some counter intuitive ways. So can you talk about that, particularly about what the what your research kind of showed for some of that? Yes. Sunita Sah 30:57 So where this is very relevant to both compliance and Defiance is sort of these pressures that we have to go along with other people. And one of the psychological processes that I uncovered with my collaborators is what I call insinuation anxiety. And this I describe as a distinct type of anxiety that arises when people start worrying that their non compliance with another person's wishes is going to be interpreted as a signal of distrust. So it's going to insinuate that the person is not whom they appear to be or should be, and this increases the pressure to comply. So if we go back to the Milgrim participants like probably some of their nervous tension is due to the fact that they want to tell the experimenter that the experimenter is wrong and they're harming the other person, but it's very difficult to do that in the same way that it's often difficult for us to go against What your boss wants and tell them that they're wrong, or even a family member, or, as I've found in my experiments, even strangers. Yeah, and so one of the experiments that I conducted was on a ferry going from Connecticut to Long Island, and we had a middle aged white man dressed in a suit approached passengers to fill out a short survey, and in this survey, it was just innocuous questions, very short, less than five minutes. Was the ferry running on time? Is it clean? All of these types of questions, and we the man said, I'm going to give you $5 if you fill out the survey. So we had over 250 people fill out the survey. We weren't so interested in the answers to those questions, but after the survey was completed, the man would say, Well, I can give you the $5 as promised, or I can enter you into a mystery lottery which pays out somewhere between zero and $10 but the average payment is less than $5 yeah, so you can imagine what most people would choose in that situation. So 92% chose the $5 in cash. Cash, you know, just give me the crisp $5 bill. You would do the same, right? Kurt Nelson 33:21 Probably, yeah. I mean economically, classical economists would say that it's a no brainer. You always take that cash because it has a better value today. Sunita Sah 33:29 So, yes, yeah. And that's what we saw in the passengers. Only 8% chose the mystery lottery. Yeah. But when the man, instead of just giving both options, you've got the $5 in cash, or you can enter this mystery lottery. Just say, I recommend the lottery now, compliance more than doubled to 20% okay. What was even more surprising was when the man disclosed a conflict of interest and said, I'm going to receive a bonus or more commission if you enter the lottery. And what we found now is that compliance more than doubled to 42% again, and it wasn't because they were trying to help the man like they trusted the man less in our questions that we asked afterwards in our survey, they trusted the man less. They even liked the man less, but they felt more pressure to go along with it, to avoid signaling that the man could not be trusted, or that the man could be biased by his conflict of interest. And that's insinuation anxiety, and we see it. When we have less trust, we have more compliance, and it ends up we're going going along with advice that we don't trust, just because of this disclose conflict of interest and the increase in insinuation anxiety. Kurt Nelson 34:51 It's, it's very fat. I found it really fascinating, because I could put myself in that very shoe, right? I i. Know that I have that exact feeling many times it's like, Oh yes, I don't want to have them think that I don't like or don't trust them or don't like them, even though I know that this is against my better judgment and doing other things. And I see my 15 year old even probably double my own, you know, insulation anxiety in their in the way that they're responding to things so Sunita Sah 35:27 and so many people have told me stories about insinuation anxiety, you know, at the medical office, or, you know, even like, you know, when the mechanic tells you to have all these repairs done to your car, it's very difficult to say no in these situations, and it could be the reason as well, that nurses don't speak up to physicians when they see them making a mistake, or CO pilots don't say anything to their pilot. So it can happen in these smaller situations, but also in these life and death situations, it's such a powerful force that keeps us quiet and compliant when we really should be speaking up and saying something well, Kurt Nelson 36:08 even to the point of, you know, getting a second opinion from a doctor. You know, it's like that is, you know, tried to, I think it's trying to be more and more, you know, socially acceptable to do, but there is that feeling of like, Oh, I'm, I'm gonna go get a second opinion. And you have that anxiety that comes up with that component. And so with that Sunit, how do you overcome that? How? What are ways that we can break past that, that anxiety that we have and, you know, move past this, this component. Sunita Sah 36:44 Well, the first step is to really name it, acknowledge it, and name it. You know, as psychologists say, you know, name it to tame it. So let's name like this is what I'm feeling, insinuation, anxiety. It's very difficult for me to signal any negative signal to someone else. So I don't want to insinuate in any way that they can't be trusted, that they're sexist, that they're incompetent. Any negative evaluation becomes difficult for us to do. So we can name it first of all, and then the best way is to get some physical distance, if you can get out of that before you make a decision or that you're if they are pressuring you to comply with something, take time out. So I call this the power of the pause. You know, take physical distance. If you can't, if you can't, take physical distance, then go for psychological distance. So talking to yourself in the third person, create some distance, you know. So Kurt, what is it that you really want to do? Yeah, you know, just ask yourself that question. Just take a few minutes, close your eyes, and the research shows that is more likely to create psychological distance and take a different perspective on the situation. So often we think about the person that's standing right in front of us, like the Milgram participants did. They're thinking about what the experimenter is telling them, and I think their nervous tension, there were signals of insinuation anxiety. But if they can expand their view to think about what is it that they really want, and what's happening to the learner, and the focus being on the learner rather than on the experimenter, then that is something where we can overcome insinuation, anxiety, Kurt Nelson 38:31 yeah, and going back to Milgram, you bring up another kind of way that he did This experiment, where the authoritarian person in that lab coat that was, you know, pushing the teacher to continue on with the experiment, etc. There was one variation where they were in a separate room, and again, you know, there was much more readily people not going all the way up. Is that correct? Am I getting that right? Sunita Sah 39:00 Yes, that's absolutely right. So when the experimenter gave orders by telephone, rather than actually being in the room, we saw the level of compliance go really quite high, I think to around like 80% it was, it's quite shocking. Can I say that it went quite high, you know? And that was because what was fascinating about that was that some of the participants were reassuring the experimenter that they were increasing the electric shocks, but they were actually just giving the 15 volt shot over and over again. So this is what I call quiet defiance, in that you're not publicly saying no to anyone. You're not confronting them, but you are acting in alignment with your values. And there's a time and place for that, Kurt Nelson 39:49 yeah, and let's get into that. Because you had different levels of defiance. And quiet defiance was one of them, in various different ones. Can you kind of talk through that spectrum or that that go? Radiation of the different types of defiance that you had? Sunita Sah 40:04 Yes, absolutely. So first, typically, I have these five stages of defiance that people go through, and then there's some different concepts that people might feel. So if we think about so first of all the five stages, the first stage is tension, right? That feeling that I'm talking about. And what's really interesting here is that people tend to do one of two different things. One is that you can actually really lean into that tension and think about what is it that means, right? What does it mean to be feeling that? Why does this tension and it might manifest for people in different ways, like some people, when they know that they want to defy they get a dry mouth. Some others get a headache. I feel some kind of stomach unease, you know. So people might feel that tension in different ways, and it's really important to get familiar with it. And I'm not talking like about a gut feel. I'm talking about like this tension we feel between two forces, what we think is the right thing to do and what somebody else is expecting of us in that situation. And so the second stage is to really acknowledge it and not disregard it. Not be like, I've got to push past this. You know, it's probably fine. The other person knows best. Don't do that. Acknowledge it, which is the second stage right? Acknowledge it to yourself. And then the third stage, which is actually quite a critical stage, is vocalizing that to somebody else, so escalating vocalizing to someone else that you don't feel comfortable with this, or asking some clarifying questions, like, What do you mean by that? Have you considered this? And in this stage, you can still be in a subservient position. You're just clarifying and saying that you don't feel comfortable. And what's fascinating about this stage is that the research shows if you can just get to this stage, you're much more likely to get to the final stage. And why is that? Well, first of all, you've said this out loud now, and so you've changed the environment a little bit, which is a good thing in itself, but also it's really hard for you to go back in time and say that you were fine with it in the to begin with, right? That cognitive dissonance is just going to be too much. So just saying that you're not comfortable with it is a great thing to do. And also you might have changed how somebody might react as well in that situation. Now, the fourth stage is where you say you cannot comply, and it's important to be able to stick to that. Just not, you know, go back to the other stages. If more pressure comes on, is your threat of non compliance. I don't I don't want to do that. I can't do that. And then that final stage is your act of defiance. And what's great about that stage is that tension that you felt in the first stage, if you can get to stage five, it just melts away, it dissipates. And so it's more joyful, it's more honest. You're living in alignment with your values. And I can't highlight that enough, because if we think we can just disregard our attention at stage one, it comes back, and then we feel regret, we feel resentment, and it builds up, and that has a tremendous cost on us if we're doing it over and over again. So we might not go through every stage in step. It might not be linear. We might go back and forth. I've, like, toggled around stage two and three quite a lot when I was learning how to defy. And some people might jump from Stage Two to stage five because it's become so natural for them. And that is really what I call the Defiance dream. Like, once you practice thin enough, you know what to do in that situation. So those stages are really important, but sometimes it's not safe to defy and so I do have some other concepts that I talk about in the book, which is, one is conscious compliance, where all the elements for consent, for your true Yes, are present. You have the capacity, knowledge, understanding, perhaps even the freedom to say no, but you decide not to, because the costs are going to be too great, right then and there. The costs are going to be too great. All the benefits are going to be too meager. So you decide to go along with it in that situation, and not forever, but right then and there, and sometimes that is very much recommended, especially if you're in physical danger, right? It's not safe for you to defy. Then in that situation, you consciously comply, try to get out of the situation, and just be aware. That's what you had to do in that situation to survive. So there's conscious compliance, there's quiet defiance, as I mentioned, that aspect of defying but without the public confrontation of it. And, yeah, there's many, many other different concepts in the in the book, yeah. Kurt Nelson 44:55 Well, I know we're, we're getting, you know, near the end of our time together, I did. Want to talk a couple more things, and one of them is just that you end the book talking about moral Mavericks. And I found, again, really interesting concept. So, so what is a moral Maverick? And how do I become one? Sunita Sah 45:17 So a moral moral Maverick is someone who is learning how to defy, or has learned how to defy, and can speak up and act when it matters, and we're all aiming to get there, you know, we have are using defiance as a practice. So what I really want to emphasize is many of us think of defiance as a personality trait, and that, oh, especially like me, I had a self concept of being very compliant, and Defiance is something for other people. It's not for me, it's for other people. And this is a myth. If we think about defiance as being loud and angry and aggressive, or even if we think about it as being heroic or superhuman, then we think it's out of reach for us. It's not for us. But you don't have to be brave, even you don't have to be a superhero. You don't have to have a strong personality or be larger than life to incorporate defiance in your life. We can all do it in a way that's more natural for us with far less angst than we used to have. And so knowing like what's more natural for you, the way that you can defy that feels easier for you is what we have to learn. And how do we get there? We get there with practice. And so we start anticipating the most common situations that we might face, that we have to defy, because often we've been in situations and we wish reacted a particular way, and then we regret not doing that. So we can probably imagine them. So you know, at work, I can imagine, oh, in that meeting, that person is going to say something offensive about another person. How do I know that? Because it's happened in every meeting that we've had Kurt Nelson 46:59 in the last History is repeating itself. Sunita Sah 47:02 But this time, we could just ask them something like, What do you mean by that? And that simple statement has changed the water in which everybody else is swimming because you've put it out there. And that person might change. They might not change. That doesn't matter. They might think twice about doing it in front of you again, or with other people that are there, present in the room, you might find allies in the other people in the room too. So you've changed something. And this comes from this anticipation visualization and then role scripting and practicing over and over again, because the only way to change our neural pathways is to actually do the behavior, not intellectually know about it, but to actually do it again Kurt Nelson 47:43 and again, you talk about values as well, and really how important understanding yourself is in that process. And there's so I want you to talk about that. And then there's a there's a quote that I'm going to talk about, because I found it really, just well said and beautiful, and we'll get to that after this. But can you talk a little bit about knowing yourself and the value aspect of this? Sunita Sah 48:08 So values are really important, because I have, like, what I call the Defiance compass, which really helps us figure out is this the right time and place to defy? And it starts off with, like, actually knowing yourself. Who are you? You know, who am I? What are my values? And this research and values is really wonderful, because most people don't think about their values unless they're explicitly asked to do so. And what's nice about writing it down and clarifying our values is that once we have that again, the research shows we're more likely to act in alignment with him, and that's one of the biggest things we have. Like if you hear in conversations, people saying, Oh, that wasn't me, or, you know, well, if you're acting in that way, it does become you if you do it over and over again. So how do we decrease the gap between who we think we are and what we actually do, because often that gap is enormous, right? We wish we'd acted a certain way, but we don't actually do it in the moment. So think about what your values are, integrity, compassion, equality. When I ask my students, they come up with some of the same values all the time almost seems universal, in a way, the things that we think are really important in how we want to behave on a daily basis. And so then the next step is about assessing the situation. Is it safe for me to speak up? Will it have positive impact? The last question in the Defiance compass is, what does someone like me do in a situation such as this, and here, this is really connecting your identity with action. So what does someone like me in with these values of fairness, equality, compassion, whatever your values are, what do I do in this situation? Because, again, that's going to feed right back to the first question. Who am I? And so to be able to defy you really do need to be connected to who you are and what your values are well. Kurt Nelson 50:07 And I think what you just said ties in beautifully with this line that I found just absolutely brilliant that was in the book. It was it was this, and I'm going to quote it here. Values are not situationally dependent, though, in practice, acting on them may be, and I think this hits really hard for me, because you see that so often it's like, okay, your values are they're your values, but the act of acting on those values is not always as simple as we would like it Sunita Sah 50:40 to be? Yeah. I mean, my research has shown me again again, what somebody believes their values to be is different from how they actually behave. And so what I hope with the Defiance compass is to decrease that gap. Kurt Nelson 50:55 And again, for all of our listeners, I really encourage you to go out and get this book, because it's just, it's a it's a well written book. Lots of stories we didn't get into half of what you more than half of what you covered in the book, and lots of just really wonderful stories about people in real life situations, either working and being defiant or or, you know, afterwards going, Oh, I wasn't and why that was going on. So really, really encourage everybody out there to go out and get this book, but I would be remiss, and Tim would yell at me if we didn't talk a little bit about music before, before we ended here. So Sunita, I have a question, if you were stranded on a desert island. Everything. You're perfectly fine there. You're stranded for a year, and you only have one listening device, and that listening device can only contain the catalogs of two artists, two musicians or recording artists, whoever bands, whatever you would like, who would you want to have as the the artist that you pick to be on that that listening device, Sunita Sah 52:14 I was so hoping you weren't going to ask this question. Sunita Sah 52:21 Such a hard one for me, I would want to, as a scientist, run an experiment and see what I like listening to over and over and over again. Kurt Nelson 52:30 Well, there you have. You have a year to run that experiment. Sunita Sah 52:34 Okay, fantastic. Why I find this so hard is because it's certain songs that appeal to me more like you know, of course, I have some my of my favorite artists and bands, and I talk a little bit about them in the book as well. I love the cure growing up absolutely Kurt Nelson 52:51 you mentioned disintegration, which is one of my favorite, favorite albums of all time. Sunita Sah 52:57 So maybe that would be one of them. But I also I just love different songs from different people. And I, actually, I did create, when the book came out in January, I did create my own defiance soundtrack, which is, it's on my website, so you can go and have a look at what I've got in there. So there's a little bit of, I think, Pink Floyd, Twisted Sister that the Kurt, of course, had to be in there. There's, you know, David Bowie. There's just lots of different artists. And if I could just take like, like a playlist of songs, that is what I would like, something kind of upbeat, you know, or something I could dance to as well. If I'm alone on this desert island, I want to be able to dance. Kurt Nelson 53:44 It is fascinating. We've had a number of people who have talked about like, and again, we often get people who like, oh, we need to have, I need to have two different styles. I need to have one that's more, you know, introspective or moody and different pieces and then that upbeat piece. But there are a number of people who talk about, I just need something that I can dance or move to that, you know, gets me going and has that upbeat kind of component to it. So I think there's, there's something there, yeah, yes. Sunita Sah 54:14 I think definitely, like, I mean, I did think about that, but being on an island, if you're on your own, there's so much time for introspection, and there's also, there's also a lot of calm, right? And nice sounds of nature. So that's why I'm going for upbeat, yeah? Kurt Nelson 54:32 Well, I would say, I mean, if you took the cure, you know, you're going to be intro introspective, right there. I mean, oh my gosh. So, which might not necessarily be the best alone on an island when you're sitting about thinking all those Sunita Sah 54:47 things, but it takes me back to my happy days, right? Yes, it does. Kurt Nelson 54:51 It takes I my roommate had a huge, huge wall size poster of boys. Don't cry when, you know, we were there, and Robert Plant with very wise, very, very wise and, and even, I mean, you know they, I saw them in concert, and just in there, they just came out like last year, I believe, with that new album, which was, again, a fantastic, you know, after 1015, years of not releasing any new music, it was just again, deep and wonderfully wise and again, responding to the environment and the age and the the world that that we're living in now, versus, you know what it was in the 80s. So it's fascinating. Sunita, this has been absolutely wonderful. And thank you so much for being a guest on behavioral grooves. Sunita Sah 55:45 Thank you so much. I very much enjoyed it. Kurt Nelson 55:55 Welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from my discussion with Sunita. Have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our defiant brains. Tim, that was an easy I could have. I could have been defiant and said something else, but I just went, Tim Houlihan 56:17 so are you defying by saying defying? Because you don't mean to be defying, but you are going to say that word because you're not. Is this like reverse psychology? Kurt Nelson 56:29 Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I am defiant by being defiant and the defying, defying, I don't know. Tim Houlihan 56:37 It was a great conversation. You guys had a really good conversation. I love Kurt Nelson 56:41 we did, we did it was, and I we've talked about this before. Is when I first got, when we first got the book, I was like, Oh, just the title. Like, I was like, on what is this book about? I don't know if I'm gonna like it. And I got into the book, and, dang, I like to like like the book it was, it was not what I was expecting it to be. And so this idea of, you know, we Defiance is acting in accordance with one's own true values when there's pressure to do otherwise, which is sunita's definition, I think is so wonderful, because too often we we feel this pressure, right? We feel the need to conform, even when we don't want to. I mean, you talked about it at the beginning in the intro. I mean some major life decision, but not even those major life decisions, just in every day, you know, making decisions about where we're going to go eat, or, you know, other things. It's this idea of conformity, yeah, Tim Houlihan 57:53 but, but conformity isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yes, right, right. You guys talked about that, and this isn't, it's not that conformity actually leads to bad things all the time. Kurt Nelson 58:09 No, conformity is a wonderful thing to assume. We're hard for it, right? That's exactly it. I mean, think about, think about how we have society. Needs to conform, we wouldn't. We would still be in small tribal clans where there's close knit components. If we didn't have this underlying element of conforming because we wouldn't get along. We wouldn't that. You'd be running through stop signs, right? You would be smashing into other cars. You would be doing all these different things. We conform because that allows us to, you know, do other things inside of a society that allow it to prosper. That's right. The issue, I think, that what Sunita was saying, and I fully align with this, is that sometimes we have this natural tendency to conform, and we conform too much, as we as Stanley Milgram showed in the Milgram experiments, is when we know something isn't right, and yet, because of authority, because of social norms, in that situation, we tease the kid at school because we don't want to be the out on the outside of the cool group, Right? So we will do things that we don't necessarily agree with, we know, and our true heart of hearts is wrong, but we do it, yeah? And that, I think, is one of the key messages, yeah, yeah. Tim Houlihan 59:55 I like the way that you said that it's not so much the conformity actually. Is the problem itself. It's this blind conformity to flawed norms, right? And so this is, this is kind of the tricky part where we have to kind of get our our heads around the idea of what is our true value and what makes the most sense to us, right? That that's sunita's thesis here, yeah. Kurt Nelson 1:00:20 And I think, I think you can go back to this idea of, you know, sometimes we do horrible things. We do tease that kid in high school because they're different. And we know that that's not what I believe, but we do it because the context, the environment, the people that surround us. We we do take that shock all the way up to 400 even though we know it's wrong, because we have that authority figure sitting over us. And those are yes examples. I mean, we see those every day. I mean, those people aren't evil. Those people aren't bad, per se, they're doing not good things, but this is the the Lucifer effect that that Philip Zimbardo talks about, that under certain situational pressures, ordinary people can engage in harmful behavior, and it's not because they're immoral, it's not because they're evil people, but because they conform to the roles that society has outlined, and they conform to the authority and the expectations that we have all around us, yeah, and on a On the Tim Houlihan 1:01:32 plus side, the ethical use of authority is is a good thing, and it shows up in Robert Cialdini, seven principles of persuasion there. And again, I want to get back to the evolutionary thing, just because, you know, I love that stuff, but it has enabled us, like having that respect and that, that willingness to conform to the authority figures, has enabled the human experience to thrive. So, so it's not all a bad thing. Kurt Nelson 1:02:03 So it's not all a bad thing, but it can lead to horrible things, slavery, the I mean, there's a lot of examples where, yes, where conformity is bad. And that, I think, is what Sunita is saying, is that conformity in itself isn't bad. It's the blind conformity, and we need to be able to train ourselves. This is the other piece that I thought was really interesting, is this idea of we can train ourselves to stick up for our own values, to be able to defy that authority figure when they're telling us to do things against our will, to defy the social norms of the group and do that wrong thing because the group is doing it, we don't have to comply, right? And I think that's compliance and conformity are two different things. I think that was the other thing that Sunita said, Tim Houlihan 1:03:05 That is that is a brilliant compliance. Compliance and and consent are two different things. And I think that that that is really, really great to to remember, because sometimes I certainly am aware of it in my own life, where I've just I went along, just to go along when there are social situations where I could or where I was justifying it, and and sunita's message about saying, Hey, who are you? Like? Who am I? And what does it mean to me? Like getting in touch with my own values. I love that. I love that you guys explore that in your conversation, I guess. Kurt Nelson 1:03:49 And I think that's a really key piece, because this is something I truly believe most of us do not do a deep introspection of what our values are, because it's hard. It is hard, and it's if you ever try doing it, it you lead you down rabbit holes. You go, Oh, I could do that. It could be there. It's just like, yeah, there's a fantastic exercise. And we use this in some of our behavior shift products, where it's like a list of 60 some value words, statements that you know, I want you know. And so you're supposed to circle 10 of them that most align with how you feel. And in doing that exercise, every single time I want to circle 2030, because and so then you have to pick all right of these which are more resonating with who I truly want to be in the future. And it's it's hard because in any. Situation, any of those could probably pop up. And if we don't fully really align with and understand those values that are most important to us, we have the tendency to be able to go off in different ways, Tim Houlihan 1:05:17 right, right? Excellent. Okay, again. Back to your conversation with with the amazing Sunita. What else did you want to talk about in our grooving session here? Kurt Nelson 1:05:29 You know I, I think there's this part where there is this element where we don't necessarily know the negative. Ramifications of some of our actions and going along with the norms up front that it conformity feels neutral until that harm accumulates. Tim Houlihan 1:05:55 So the accumulation effect, yeah, that that is kind of that, I think that that's a scary thing, right? That it can just be small things, and that those small things can add up over time, yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:06:11 so this is this gets to again, that compliance versus conformity, right? Sunita talked about true, yes and true, no. Oh yeah, this was good. I thought that was a really interesting piece of this. Because if it's not a true no or not a true Yes, that's where that that's the gray area. And those were some of those pieces that, in and of it itself, that one time, that one piece maybe, maybe not be bad, evil in the grander thing, grander scheme of things, but I think it could have that impact later on. And I I love the how she talked about the the five elements around you know consent, like, what does true consent mean? You have to have the capacity, the knowledge, the understanding, the freedom to say, no. I mean, yeah, if somebody's holding a gun to your head, you know you're pretty coercive. Yeah, right. And you have to be authorized to be able to do that. And I thought the way that she laid that out, both in the book and in our conversation, I thought was really good. And I think it's a really key piece to remember as we're moving on here. Unknown Speaker 1:07:35 Yeah, excellent. Kurt Nelson 1:07:37 What about you? Is there anything like you listened to it and what I did, Tim Houlihan 1:07:44 I have to say that the the most important thing that came out of it for me is something that I want to hold off in talking about until the last thing. So, yeah, because it's that important. But this I but she talked about this idea of having small disruptions to prevent harmful social situations and social norms from gaining momentum, getting into this, this, this accumulation effect. This is a really cool idea like it reminds me of that comment that Christina bichieri made to us years ago when she kind of said, hey, you know, remember that you're part of the social norm. You get to play a role. You are playing a role every day in the impact that you're having on the world. And I lose sight of that all the time, yeah. And I think Sunita reminded me that my incremental individual actions can make a difference. Now I might not see them, and they might not be grand or grandiose. They might be really small, but they do make a difference Kurt Nelson 1:08:54 the and the point about that Sunita made about training for defiance to be able to act in alignment with one's true values when the pressure is on, right? That's it's easy to to act in accordance with your values when there's no pressure, when there's not an authority figure looming over you, when there's not this social peer pressure to go along the the organization saying it's just, we're just, you know, doing this a little bit. It's, it's good for us in the in the long run, when it's not necessarily bad or it is bad in the in the long term, right? Those are the times when we need to train ourselves to do the little interruptions to be able to say, No, we we can't just fudge that number a little bit. I know it's not a big deal, but that goes against our values and no, we can't hide this idea that our. Product has these ramifications of some safety or the way we produce it causes, you know, additional waste that goes beyond what we're doing. Those are the types of things that we get pressured into saying yes to, and we can rationalize away unless we're teaching ourselves to do that. Tim Houlihan 1:10:22 Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, here's my last thing. We talk about music with lots and lots of our guests, and we get a lot of answers. And it's not that the cure hasn't been brought up in the past. It has. We've had guests, but I was not expecting a scholarly PhD who also has an MD who writes this fantastically. You know, both intellectually interesting and, of course, it's written really accessible too. I love defy she loves the cure. She I mean, there was the enthusiasm in Cindy, his voice just blew me away, and then, like, your face just lights up. I was like, maybe it was a good thing that I wasn't in on that conversation. Kurt Nelson 1:11:10 Well, it's probably she could have said the Kurt Depeche Mode. Yeah, you know whether 80s alternative bands that I would be able to have a, you know, coherent conversation about, if she would have brought up, oh, I really like this jazz, you know, musician, or this, like classical composer, I would be sitting there going, Oh, I wish Tim was here, but the cure Robert Smith, I can talk all day about the cure and Robert Smith and what's your favorite song, and boys don't cry. Did you like the early works? Did you like disintegration record? You know where? You know what? About the new record? So, yeah, the new record, which is fantastic. So anyway, yeah, I was, I was very happy that I was able to talk about that, because that was not necessarily the case in many of these instances. Tim Houlihan 1:12:09 Well, I It's a part of the conversation that I just loved as I'm listening to it in real time, and it just sort of unfolded in that way that was just terrific. Kurt Nelson 1:12:20 All right. Well, let's wrap it up with the the cure. Okay, you know the cure for our like listeners, malaise is to join our Facebook behavioral groups community, because you'll get some fantastic questions every week, and community kind of talking about, like, their lessons and learned. So you're not only getting to think about some deep and sometimes just silly questions, but you're getting the group input on this to help you when you're, like, looking at your values and different things, like, Oh, I could think about it from this perspective, because the group is helping me do that so Tim Houlihan 1:13:06 and it's a safe place where, if you decide that you want to defy and you want to say that doesn't align with how I feel, it's a safe place to bring that up and to not have this big ass authority figure, you know, pounding the thumb on you. And by the way, nice segue to get into. Did you like that here? Like here? Also, I want to just mention, if you happen to not be getting our sub stack every week, when a new episode comes out, please subscribe. It's you can you can subscribe for free. You can subscribe for $5 a month, $10 a month, $50 a month, $500 a month, $5,000 a month, whatever fits your budget. Kurt Nelson 1:13:48 I want that person who has the $5,000 a month budget for our sub stack, that would be nice, or just our Patreon. We still have a Patreon out there if you just want to be don't really want the sub stack and you just want to, you know, support what we do. That would be fantastic as well. Tim Houlihan 1:14:04 So that's, that's right. So with that, folks, I just banged the microphone. How about that? Thank you so much for listening and for being a part of our community. And we hope that you can use some of sunita's really great ideas on defying and standing up and connecting with your True Self as A way to go out and find your groove the you. Transcribed by https://otter.ai