Sunita Sah (Blink Publishing (UK) One World (US))
We’ve all done it. Some of us do it all the time, in situations both trivial and serious. We say “yes” when we shouldn’t, or fail to say “no” when we should, nodding approvingly when the hairdresser has done a terrible job, caving in to a zealous salesperson or staying silent when a colleague is being undermined in a work meeting.
That is to say, we go along with things, even when it goes against our true values. Part of this comes down to being human. To function as a social species, a degree of conformity and compliance is necessary. But it also does us a disservice when we consistently fail to stand firm in our convictions and comply under pressure, even if our internal voice is telling us otherwise.
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This is the subject of Sunita Sah’s book Defy: The power of no in a world that demands yes. Sah, a former doctor in the UK and now an organisational psychologist at Cornell University in New York state, argues we can all learn how to say no when it matters most. This is a skill, not a character trait, she says.
Sah’s work has uncovered some of the psychological factors that prompt us to conform. One that many of us will recognise is the uncomfortable feeling when we worry that not complying with another person’s wishes could be interpreted as a signal of distrust. This leads us to worry more about offending the other person than doing what we think is right.
Sah calls this “insinuation anxiety”, and her studies shed light on how this changes our behaviour. For instance, when a salesperson or doctor reveals they will be paid an incentive if we take the advice that they are recommending, we trust them less – yet, counterintuitively, we are more likely to follow their advice because of the anxiety of not wanting to insinuate that they are biased or untrustworthy.
This form of interpersonal stress has important real-world consequences. Insinuation anxiety, says Sah, may be one reason why only a fraction of healthcare workers or airline personnel will speak up if they spot an error made by a colleague.
But Sah argues that tuning in to the uncomfortable feeling of insinuation anxiety is crucial if we are to learn how to fight our internal pressure to conform. “It’s our warning sign,” she writes.
It can also help to be aware of another potential factor Sah’s research has uncovered: the paradoxical “kicking yourself” effect. If you are swayed to make a decision against your better judgement, you might think that this would alleviate feelings of guilt and responsibility if the outcome was bad. In fact, she writes, people feel more culpable if they think they should have known better than to follow bad advice.
Of course, this subject matter leads Sah to difficult and uncomfortable places, and she doesn’t shy away from them in Defy. For example, she delves into the nuances of the infamous Milgram experiment carried out in the 1960s to investigate whether the claim of “just following orders” – the constant refrain during the Nuremberg trials of former Nazi officers – was a psychological reality outside such regimes.
She also looks into the Challenger space shuttle disaster, caused by a failure of a crucial component of the spacecraft, the O-rings, where the concerns of the engineers who manufactured the parts were overruled.
But if a rallying cry for the power of saying no when it really matters conjures up images of being angry and confrontational, superhuman or heroic, think again.
“It isn’t only for the brave, or the extraordinary,” writes Sah. “It has a quieter, small-scale side – which can have enormous impacts on our lives and the lives of those around us.”
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