Is it sometimes bad to be so good and so compliant? And how can we make it easier for people to become defiant?

Dr. Sunita Sa is a leading authority on the psychology of influence and decision making at Cornell University, whose groundbreaking work shows us how to resist manipulation and stand our ground. I saw that nine out of 10

healthcare workers, most of them nurses, didn't feel comfortable speaking up when they saw

somebody making an error. And that could be life and death situations. It is so interesting

the way that we can flate compliance with goodness.

I came to this revelation that we'd misunderstood what it means to defy, whereas my new definition is to defy is to...

So take me into this a bit more.

When we're asked to do something that goes against one of our values, we feel tension.

We need to recognize that

because that could actually be...

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ensures you'll never miss an episode. Now on to the show. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life

Project. There's this notion that defiance is a bad thing, that, you know, it's inherently, it's not okay, you know, keep your head down and sort of like follow the things. And that you make this interesting argument that says effectively that we are conditioned to believe that compliance is inherently good and defiance is inherently bad. So take me into this argument more. It's so fascinating.

For me in particular, as a child, I was really known as being an obedient daughter and a student. And I remember asking my dad when I was quite young, what does my name mean? And he said,

in Sanskrit, Sanita means good. And mostly I lived up to that. These were the messages that I received,

like, to be good was to do as you're told, go to school when you're told, do your homework,

don't question your teachers.

And the messages came from family, teachers, community, that we started to equate,

or at least I sently did, and a lot of people I know, start to equate being compliant

...