Read the full transcript of behavioral science leader Dr. Sunita Sah’s talk titled “Why Do We Stay Silent In Uncomfortable Situations?” at TEDxMiami, Sep 30, 2025.
A Young Doctor’s First Financial Meeting
DR. SUNITA SAH: I want to take you back to my early 20s, to my first job as a junior physician in the UK. I was overworked, underpaid and constantly tired. I was working what we call a one in two, which meant that I worked a full day, stayed on call overnight, worked the whole of the next day before finally going home to get some sleep, only to do the whole thing again the next morning.
So when I received, out of the blue, an invitation to meet with a financial advisor for free at the hospital in which I worked, I was surprised and I thought, why not take a break?
I remember that meeting really well. It seemed rather important. It was in the hospital’s posh meeting room, well as fancy as you can get on the UK’s National Health Service. And the first thing I noticed when I walked in the room was that there was a carpet. It felt so good beneath my feet compared to the stone cold floors of the ward. And there was also a couch with blue cushions. I sunk down into it and I was almost asleep when Dan, the financial advisor, arrived.
He was tall, handsome, sharp fashionable suit. Did I say handsome? And he greeted me with this big smile. He asked me many questions, mostly about my finances, and he built up this great rapport with me. And after about an hour, which seemed like a vast amount of time to be discussing my extremely limited disposable income at the time, he recommended I invest in a fund and that he would write a detailed report for me and get it back to me within a week.
And all of this was for free. I was impressed.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
The Moment Everything Changed
In my tired state, I blurted out, “What’s in it for you?” And Dan smiled and then he disclosed, “Well, there’s no such thing as a free lunch and I will receive a commission if you invest in the fund that I’m recommending.”
Those words changed everything for me. For the previous hour, I had thought Dan had been giving me good advice. I liked him. But now that his ulterior motive had been revealed, I didn’t trust him as much. Perhaps that’s to be expected, perhaps that’s rational, but here’s the strange part. I didn’t want Dan to know that I no longer trusted him. I didn’t want Dan to know that his disclosure had corrupted our great rapport, our fantastic relationship. I didn’t want to insinuate in any way that I now thought he was giving me bad advice.
So I started to feel quite uncomfortable and I actually felt more pressure to go along and take his advice and sign on the dotted line just to avoid signaling distrust. And right there, in that tension that I felt was the real story.
Introducing Insinuation Anxiety
I’m Dr. Sunita Sah. I’m a physician turned organizational psychologist and a professor at Cornell University. And I’ve studied compliance, defiance, influence and authority for years. And what I found is that particular feeling arises in so many situations that we encounter.
I call it insinuation anxiety. It’s the fear of saying something negative to someone, especially when they’re standing right in front of you. We think we’re being polite. We think we’re being good. But sometimes being good gets in the way of doing what’s right.
Insinuation anxiety is the reason why we accept bad medical advice, unnecessary repairs to our car, unethical suggestions at work. It’s why we don’t say anything to the massage therapist when they use too much force. We absorb discomfort, emotional, physical, ethical, because we’re afraid to say anything negative to anyone else. We want to save their face so we endure pain.
Recognizing The Signal
That’s tension. Whether it’s a gut punch, a tight knot in the stomach, a flutter in the chest, that’s the signal. And it arises whenever our instinct to comply collides with our deeper values. That particular feeling is powerful and paralyzing.
And what’s more, it doesn’t just affect us. For example, imagine someone in your office tells a joke at somebody else’s expense. Everyone is laughing, but something inside you says, that’s not okay. Maybe you witness harassment on the subway. A man is saying offensive things to a woman. She tries to ignore him, but you can’t.
Insinuation anxiety is the reason why one study found that on average, nine out of ten healthcare workers, most of them nurses, don’t feel comfortable speaking up when they see a colleague or a physician making an error. It could be why copilots remain silent when they see their superiors making a mistake.
Imagine you are in that hospital or on that airline. You want people to be speaking up in these situations. But in each of these moments, we feel something. That space between your urge to comply and your deeper desire to act in alignment with your values. Most of us try to ignore it. We tell ourselves, don’t make trouble. It’s not a big deal. Let it go.
But that tension, that’s not weakness. That’s your value speaking. If you had given away all your agency, if you had given away all your power, you wouldn’t feel any tension. You would just go along with it. That tension is your strength.
The Power of Tension
Whether it manifests as anxiety, doubt, or even physical discomfort, pay attention. That tension, listening to your tension, could lead to a safer office. It could protect someone in the workplace, on the subway. It could lead your company out of legal trouble and you and your boss out of jail.
And what’s more, it could ripple into something much bigger. A less racist society. Public spaces safer for women. A business world committed to ethical dealing.
It’s not about reacting to a gut feeling. That tension, when held to the light, helps us see more clearly, not less. It’s not the voice of panic. It’s not an emotional reaction. It’s often the whisper of conscience.
The Mystery Lottery Study
I’ve seen this resistance to resistance everywhere. In one study that I conducted, I had a man dressed in a fashionable suit ask participants to make a choice. You can take $5 in cash, crisp $5 bill, or you can be entered into a mystery lottery that is worth less. It pays somewhere between $0 to $10, but the average payment is less than $5.
What do most people do in this situation? Well, the majority of participants, 92%, chose the guaranteed $5 in cash. Easy. Wouldn’t you do the same? Only 8% chose the mystery lottery.
However, when the man simply recommended you take the lottery, now 20% of people complied. Even more surprising was in another condition, when the man disclosed a conflict of interest and said that he would receive a bonus if you took the lottery, compliance more than doubled to 42%.
Even though the participants told us they trusted the advice less and they liked the man less, they complied more. Why? Because like with me, with Dan, the financial advisor, they didn’t want to signal their distrust. They told us that they felt too uncomfortable to reject the advice now because it would indicate they didn’t trust this man, a complete stranger.
That’s insinuation anxiety. And it leads to more compliance with advice that we trust less. We feel tension, but we disregard it because we’re taught that being polite is more important than staying true to our values.
Geoffrey Wigand: A Moral Maverick
But some people do act. They feel tension and they listen to it. Geoffrey Wigand was a biochemist at a major tobacco company. At first he told himself that he could probably make cigarettes safer, but then he discovered buried research, carcinogenic additives, suppressed studies, manipulated messaging.
He raised concerns, but he was fired, sued, threatened, his family fractured, and yet his tension grew until finally one day he spoke out publicly. Wigand became the first tobacco insider to appear on 60 Minutes. He exposed what tobacco companies had known for years, that nicotine was addictive and they knew it.
His testimony led to lawsuits, sweeping regulations, and a $206 billion settlement, but millions of lives were impacted. He changed public health. And even with all the costs that he endured, and they were many, when asked whether he would do it again, he said yes without hesitation.
What Wigand did was difficult, but it started with one thing. He felt tension and he acted on it. That’s what I call a moral maverick. Someone who defies pressures to stay true to what’s right. Not a rebel without a cause, but a rebel with a moral compass.
And we need more of them in hospitals, on subways, in boardrooms, and maybe even at your dinner table.
The Moment Before Courage
So the next time you feel torn, when your tension says “this isn’t right,” when another part of you says “don’t say anything,” pause. That tension, that’s not indecision, it’s not fear, it’s not weakness, it’s the moment before courage. It’s your strength asking to be used.
Because sometimes it is bad to be good, to be polite, to be compliant, to be agreeable at the cost of your conscience. So don’t dismiss your tension. That feeling might just change the world.
Thank you.
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