65% Went All the Way. Would You?

In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist who’d worked under Solomon Asch, ran a study at Yale on obedience. Around 40 people signed up believing it was a study on memory and learning. An experimenter in a lab coat told each participant to deliver an electric shock to a “learner” every time they made a mistake. The shocks weren’t real and the learner was an actor, but participants didn’t know that. As the study went on, the shocks were meant to increase in intensity, and all it took to keep people going was a few calm words: please continue, the experiment requires that you continue.

65 percent of participants went all the way to the highest intensity. Because someone in a lab coat told them to.

What does that mean for us now? When people see someone as an authority, they tend to follow, even when it makes them uncomfortable. And in a high pressure environment, that pressure gets passed along to others, usually without anyone noticing they’re doing it. Think about the moans over coffee, the snickering in meetings, a culture that hunts for flaws and never names what’s working. None of that looks like obedience on the surface. But it’s the same mechanism: calm, normalised pressure shaping how people behave, without anyone raising their voice.

So what actually helps? Name the pressure out loud. Someone saying “that’s a bit harsh” or “are we sure that’s fair on them” breaks the spell and makes the dynamic visible. Be the person who speaks up first. Milgram found obedience collapsed once participants saw someone else refuse to continue, so simply not joining in gives other people permission to do the same. And question the authority itself, not just the instruction. Participants obeyed because Yale, the lab coat, and the clipboard all signalled legitimacy. In our world that’s a manager’s tone, or “that’s just how it’s done here.” Worth asking whether it’s actually a good norm, or one you’ve just stopped questioning because it’s familiar.

Everyone influences. Few do it intentionally. Sometimes that influence is as small as choosing not to laugh along.