I was once waiting for an event to start in a hotel ballroom when a very scary alarm started blaring, complete with this pre-recorded message announcing there was a fire in the building and everyone needed to get out

immediately. This seemed to me like a smart thing to do. And if I had been alone in that ballroom,

I guarantee you I would have left. But there were lots of other people around me, taking their seats,

looking at their phones. They hardly seemed to notice as the alarm screamed on and on for at least

five full minutes. So even though I personally

was worried I might be wasting valuable time in a life or death situation, I just sat there,

trying to conceal how freaked out I was. From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. I'm here

with you today, so as you can probably guess,

it did turn out to be a false alarm. But I didn't know that at the time. Why did I not just

follow my own judgment in case there really was an emergency? No matter how independent we believe

ourselves to be, it turns out to be surprisingly hard to go against what everyone else is doing,

even in cases where we

quietly suspect everybody else is factually or even morally wrong. And that is what my guest

has written a book about. She's written a book about the importance of defiance, which she defines

not as rebellion for its own sake, but acting in accordance with our own values when there is pressure

to do otherwise. Sunita Sa is a trained physician and professor of psychology at Cornell

University. Her book is called Defy, the power of no in a world that demands yes.

Sunita, welcome to think. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.

To make it clear how much defiance

or compliance can matter in the real world, you share the example of George Floyd's murder.

We all know he was killed by one officer. It's easy to overlook the fact that there were other

officers present on the scene that day, two rookies who were close enough to see the danger

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