About a decade ago, Sunita Sah—a trained physician who is now teaching organizational psychology at Cornell’s S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management—had a pain in her chest and consulted a physician who ordered a CT scan. Sah asked the doctor why she was ordering the CT scan, and the doctor responded that she was checking for a pulmonary embolism. Sah, a physician herself, knew that her symptoms were totally inconsistent with such an embolism and that there was no reason to undergo a CT scan. She didn’t want or need the scan. Yet, she went along. Why?
She writes: “I didn’t want the medical team to think I didn’t trust their judgment. I didn’t want to make an even minor scene.” (p. xxi)
This seemingly insignificant event had such an impact on Dr. Sah that she has written a book around it called Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes (2025).
Two of our most popular Ethics Unwrapped videos deal with two social pressures that can cause good people to make bad moral decisions. First is obedience to authority (https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/obedience-to-authority), the tendency we have to accept the instructions of our bosses and other authority figures even when we are morally uncomfortable with them. Second is the conformity bias—the tendency we have to take our cues from those around us as to how to decide and act even in situations with moral implications. https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/conformity-bias)
These phenomena can cause ethical fading (https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/ethical-fading ) which occurs when we focus so much on pleasing authority figures or getting along with others that the ethical issues at stake seem to fade from view. These social forces, Sah emphasizes, underlie the human tendency to comply with instructions even when they feel wrong. “Defiance is the exception. Obedience is the rule.” (p. xxii).
This book roams widely. Sah explains her views about why the rookie police officers training under Derek Chauvin helped hold George Floyd down as Chauvin choked the life out of him over nine excruciating minutes, why Jeffrey Wigand violated his nondisclosure agreement and blew the whistle on Big Tobacco’s fraudulent practices to hide the cancer-causing properties of tobacco, why Morton Thiokol’s engineers reluctantly went along with the disastrous launch of the Challenger space shuttle in January 1986, and why Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to white passengers on her bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.
Sah goes into detail explaining the Stanley Milgram experiments showing that Americans will reluctantly inflict painful electric shocks to an apparently protesting subject just because a guy in a gray lab coat tells them to. And she explains studies showing that sales reps telling us that they will receive a nice commission if we buy the stock they are pitching to us makes it more likely, rather than less likely, that we will buy the stock. Logically, we should see the conflict of interest undermining the financial advice and be less likely to buy. But because we don’t want the sales reps to think we don’t trust them, we are actually more likely to buy the now less attractive stock.
So, how can people say “no” when they want to and know that they should defy rather than comply? Sah thinks there are five stages:
- You feel tension that tells you something is not right.
- You acknowledge to yourself that you feel this tension.
- You escalate by vocalizing your discomfort to others.
- You threaten
- You act defiantly.
Following famous political scientist James March, Sah suggests that in situations where you face a difficult “defy or comply” choice, you ask yourself three questions in order to align your choices and actions with your values:
- Who am I?
- What kind of situation is this?
- What does a person like me do in a situation like this?
In Chapter 13, Sah suggests that you can strengthen your ability to say “no” when you know you should by preparation and practice using these steps:
- “Anticipate situations that might call for defiance and reflect on past experiences.
- Visualize how you might act.
- Practice by scripting and role playing. Saying defiant words out loud allows our mouths to get used to speaking them and our ears to get used to hearing them. Engage in “small-scale” defiance—small defiant acts can lead to more change than you might anticipate.
- Repeat as necessary.” (p. 237)
(For our money, Mary Gentile’s book Giving Voice to Values (2010), which Sah recognizes as influencing this section of her book, is much the superior source for guidance in how to speak up when you know what is right—especially her chapter on pre-scripting. See https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/pillar-6-voice )
Sah’s book is much longer than it needs to be, contains too many personal detours, and should be more focused. That said, she is a gifted scholar, a good writer, and a thoughtful person. We learned a lot by reading this book.
Sources:
Mary Gentile, Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right (2010).
Sunita Sah, Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes (2025).
Sunita Sah et al., “Insinuation Anxiety: Concern that Advice Rejection Will Signal Distrust after Conflict of Interest Disclosures,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 45, No. 7, p. 1099-1112 (2019).
Videos:
Conformity Bias: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/conformity-bias
Ethical Fading: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/ethical-fading
Giving Voice to Values: Voice: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/introduction-to-giving-voice-to-values
Giving Voice to Values Video Series: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/series/giving-voice-to-values
Obedience to Authority: https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/video/obedience-to-authority