One of my problems is that I internalize everything.
I can’t express anger; I grow a tumor instead.
— WOODY ALLEN
Sooner or later it happens to all of us. You’re politely standing in line and a fellow cuts in front of you. What the …? Well, you’ll just have to say something.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” you bark. “The line ends here. It begins there!”
To punctuate your point you aggressively shake your finger in the direction of the beginning of the line. Nobody is going to play you for a fool.
It turns out you’re not alone in your impressive display of courage. Years ago we asked people at a local mall if they would speak up to a line cutter. Almost all of them said they would. Nobody wants to be a patsy. But then, later on, when we had people actually cut in front of people standing in line at a movie theater, not one person spoke up. Not one.
Of course, not all the people we studied remained totally silent. Several made faces or turned to a friend next to them and griped about the intrusion. They reserved the right to bad-mouth line cutters behind their backs.
And then came a breakthrough. After changing the age, gender, and size of the line cutters in trial after trial — to no effect — a woman finally spoke up. She tapped the shoulder of the woman who cut in front of her and asked, “Who does your hair?” (Check out a re-creation of this experiment in the video “Whose Line Is It Now?” at http://www.vitalsmarts.com/bookresources.)
Later, when members of our research team asked people why they had gone to silence in the face of someone violating a social norm — not to mention violating the sacred line rights of the subject in question — most commented that the mental math they performed at the time of the infraction suggested it wasn’t worth the effort. It was only a minor infraction of little consequence, and speaking up might actually cause a problem. Ergo, go to silence.
So we upped the ante. We left the mall and sat down next to students at a university library and made loud noises. Once again, nobody said anything. Members of our research team practically held a party in a location that most of us see as the very temple of silence, and yet nobody said a word. It was a library, and we were talking REALLY LOUD! Still nothing.
So we snuggled up close to library patrons seated at the tables around us and read from their books — occasionally underlining a passage or two. Again, little direct dialogue. Next we went to the student union building, sat next to people seated in the cafeteria, asked them about the food they were eating, and then, you guessed it, started sampling French fries and pie from their tray. Still, few spoke up.
As clinically passive as these research subjects seem, their silence was unique neither to the population we studied nor to any particular decade. As it turns out, 30 years after we started this line of research, you can watch a number of TV programs that are devoted to this very phenomenon. The producers hide their cameras, pay actors to do something strange, antisocial, or politically incorrect in front of innocent observers, and then record the antics that follow.
When faced with scenarios even more bizarre than eating from a stranger’s plate (e.g., observing a possible abduction, seeing someone collapse on the sidewalk, listening to someone make a horribly racist comment, etc.), the majority of today’s onlookers remain silent. You have to put someone’s life in danger before innocent observers will utter a word — and even then, most people don’t say anything.
But what if the scenario you’re watching is not taken from a mall study or TV program and the stakes are both genuine and high — people could die if someone doesn’t speak up. How would you feel about research subjects who remain silent under these conditions? Better yet, would you yourself keep quiet even when doing so could cause others harm?
To answer the first question, you don’t have to go very far. Simply visit a patient in a nearby hospital. Attached to the doorframe of nearly every hospital room in the Western world you’ll find a hand pump filled with sanitizing solution. Each healthcare professional entering the room, by hospital policy, is supposed to sanitize his or her hands to help avert passing infections from one patient to the next.
The good doctor entering the room you’re observing has just examined three patients down the hallway who are suffering, in turn, from cholera, meningitis, and yellow fever. He is now coming in to examine (read touch) your father-in-law. Watch as the physician enters the room and fails to wash his hands. He walks right past the bottle of sanitizing solution and toward your father-in-law. Fortunately, it’s your lucky day. An attending nurse observes this violation of protocol. Surely she’ll speak up.
Or will she?
Most won’t. Once again, it’s a math thing. It’s a physician whom the nurse has to hold accountable, and the physician could become annoyed, even offended, at the mere hint of a misstep. Heaven only knows that incurring the wrath of a physician can wreck a career. Plus there’s always a chance that the diseases won’t be passed on so easily. And then again, maybe the doctor did wash his hands somewhere out of sight. And so unfold the mental calculations of the nurse who opts to join the ranks of the silent.
Now, lest you think we’re being unfair to healthcare, let’s make it clear that the habit of not holding others accountable in the face of a possible disaster is not unique to hand hygiene nor, for that matter, theater protocols. For over three decades following that first day in the mall, we’ve routinely conducted studies examining people’s willingness to step up to the plate and hold others accountable. It turns out it’s remarkably easy to find conditions where people don’t speak up to individuals who are violating a promise, breaking a commitment, behaving badly, or otherwise not living up to expectations.
For instance, two-thirds of those we polled suggested that they can hardly stand going to family holiday gatherings because one or more of their relatives will do something offensive, yet nobody dares say anything. Someone tried to say something once, but it led to a nasty argument, and so now people clam up, suffer the intolerable tension, and leave the gathering as soon as possible.[1]
In a similar vein, the vast majority of employees we polled no longer talk politics at work because coworkers often become too forceful, even obnoxious, when expressing their views. Rather than deal with coworkers who use abrasive debate tactics, they simply avoid political discussions altogether.[2]
Speaking of workplace reticence, 93 percent of the people we polled work day in and day out with a person they find hard to work with, but nobody holds the person accountable because other employees believe that it’s too dangerous.[3] And speaking of danger, when it comes to risky acts, every day tens of thousands of people watch their coworkers perform unsafe work practices, yet they remain silent. After all, you don’t rat out a coworker, and, well, you certainly don’t talk directly to a peer about violating a rule. It’s simply not done. You don’t want to look sanctimonious.
Or how about this problem? Over 70 percent of the project managers we studied admitted that they were going to be hopelessly late on their current project because the deadline they were facing was insane but nobody spoke up when it was first created. Nobody said to the bosses, “Could you please involve us before you pick delivery dates?” In addition, when cross-functional team members put the project at risk by failing to meet their commitments, we found there was less than a 20 percent chance anyone would approach them honestly and discuss the broken commitment.[4]
2
VitalSmarts study: How to Talk Politics with Friends — and Still Have Some Left (September 2012).
4
VitalSmarts study: Pssst! Your Corporate Initiative Is Dead and You’re the Only One Who Doesn’t Know (February 2007).