Authority Misinfluence

A high proportion of people do as they’re told. They go through life ticking boxes, keeping to the rules, conforming, thoroughly playing their part in society as a whole. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Society functions because most people follow most rules most of the time. We drive on the correct side of the road. We queue at the supermarket. We pay our taxes (well, most of us do). Rules create order, and order creates civilisation.

But sometimes, rules and regulations can restrict us. They restrict our choices and restrict the decisions we make as we blindly follow historical dogma, culture, and tradition to live a life doing what’s expected rather than what we really want to do. And that’s when Authority Misinfluence stops being a helpful social norm and starts being a cage you’ve locked yourself inside.

The Programming

We’re programmed from an early age to follow the rules of our elders. It’s how we learn. It’s how we survive. Watch a toddler. They don’t figure out how to use a spoon through first principles reasoning. They watch you use a spoon, then they copy you. Most of our learning happens by copying the example of others and by doing as they do. It’s also usually a lot easier to follow someone else’s lead than work something out for ourselves.

As Thomas Edison allegedly said, “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking.” Following authority is easier than thinking for yourself. Following rules is easier than working out which rules make sense and which don’t. Doing what you’re told is easier than deciding what you should do. So you follow. And you keep following. And eventually, you forget you have a choice.

At school, we’re shown the importance of sticking to the rules. We learn by example. We’re punished if we stray from the rules. At home, we live in family groups where authority can significantly influence what we’re allowed to do. By the time you reach adulthood, you’ve spent roughly 18 years being told what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. No wonder you’ve got pretty good at following instructions.

The problem is that somewhere along the way, following instructions became your default mode. You stopped questioning whether the instructions made sense. You stopped evaluating whether the authority figure actually knew what they were talking about. You just followed. Because that’s what you’ve always done.

The Milgram Experiments

The famous Stanley Milgram psychology experiments highlight the terrifying extent of Authority Misinfluence. In his experiments, normal people, ordinary individuals like you, were instructed to give potentially dangerous and painful electric shocks to another person. The setup was simple. A figure of authority (a researcher in a white coat) told participants to administer increasingly powerful electric shocks to a “learner” every time they got an answer wrong. The learner was actually an actor, and the shocks weren’t real, but the participants didn’t know this.

The question was simple. How far would ordinary people go in following orders from an authority figure? The answer should disturb you. In Milgram’s baseline studies, around 65% of participants were willing to show obedience and give someone what they believed was a 450-volt shock that appeared to inflict serious pain on another person, simply because someone in authority asked them to do so. Not ordered. Asked. The authority figure didn’t threaten them. Didn’t force them. Just asked.

Before these experiments, experts predicted that only 1 to 2% of people would give the full shock treatment. They were wrong by more than 60 percentage points. The experts underestimated Authority Misinfluence, and I’m sure you’re underestimating the degree that authority has on your life and the decisions you make too.

A modern replication found that compliance remained remarkably high even decades later, with around seven in ten participants willing to continue past the point where the study’s ethics board required the experiment to stop. You’d think knowing about Authority Misinfluence would protect you from it. You’d be largely wrong.

The Excuse

Authority Misinfluence may help society function as a whole and keep things in order, but it can also blind us to other choices. More problematically, we can use Authority Misinfluence as an excuse. It’s easy to hide behind rules, regulations, history, and tradition. It’s convenient to say “I was just following orders” or “That’s what I was told to do” or “Nobody said I could do it differently.”

You end up becoming a passenger in your own life, living at the beck and call of others, waiting for permission that you don’t actually need, following rules that might not even apply to your situation.

I hear phrases like “Nobody told me” or “How should I know?” quite a lot in my practice. These are the phrases used by people who are so used to following others that sometimes even common sense, being proactive in their lives, or making their own decisions is no longer a natural thing for them to do. I’d recommend you listen for excuses like this in your self-talk as a warning sign that you may be losing direction or even getting too used to being directed by others.

Let me give you an example. I had a patient, let’s call him Robert, who hated his job. Absolutely despised it. It was making him miserable, affecting his health, damaging his relationships. So I asked him why he didn’t leave. His answer? “I can’t. I’ve been there fifteen years. That’s what I do.” But who told him he had to stay? Who made it a rule that fifteen years meant forever? Nobody. Robert had created this authority in his own mind, this belief that longevity equals obligation, and was following it as rigidly as if it were an actual law.

That’s Authority Misinfluence in one of its most insidious forms. You internalise rules that don’t exist, create obligations that nobody imposed on you, and then follow these phantom authorities as if they were real.

The Workplace Dynamic

At work, in a competitive environment, colleagues are often looking to gain authority, power, and control to impose their wishes and values on you and get you to follow. And it can be far too easy to follow others, follow their lead, and agree without a second thought, even when you know their views may not be the best.

You sit in a meeting. Someone senior suggests an idea. It’s not a great idea. You know it’s not a great idea. Everyone in the room probably knows it’s not a great idea. But nobody says anything. Why? Because challenging authority feels risky. Because going against the senior person feels uncomfortable. Because it’s easier to just nod along and implement a mediocre strategy than to speak up and risk looking difficult or insubordinate.

This is Authority Misinfluence in action. The authority figure doesn’t even need to be right. They just need to have authority. Their position, their title, their place in the hierarchy gives their ideas weight regardless of the actual quality of those ideas.

And here’s what makes this particularly frustrating. Often, the people in authority positions got there through a combination of factors that have nothing to do with whether they give good advice. Maybe they’ve been there longer. Maybe they’re more confident. Maybe they’re better at office politics. Maybe they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. None of these things mean they actually know what they’re doing.

Yet you follow them anyway. Because that’s what you’ve been trained to do. Because challenging authority feels wrong at a visceral level. Because your entire educational and social history has prepared you to defer to people in positions of power.

The Stakes

The stakes cannot be higher than your own life. That’s why sometimes we need to stop blindly following others, waiting for permission, and just get off our backsides, make our own choices, and do something for ourselves instead. There are times when you need to stop being nothing more than a passenger in your own life and instead start to drive the changes you need to make.

Let me be absolutely clear about what I’m saying here. I’m not telling you to become some kind of anarchist rebel who rejects all authority and refuses to follow any rules. That’s not wisdom. That’s just childish contrarianism. What I’m telling you is that you need to think about which rules make sense, which authorities actually know what they’re talking about, and which bits of advice you should follow versus which you should politely ignore.

There are perils in obedience, and blind obedience can be even more perilous. It’s straightforward to follow others. There’s always the excuse of “They told me to do it.” That’s a far too easy card to play. But when you play that card, you’re also admitting that you’ve given up control of your own life. You’ve handed the steering wheel to someone else and you’re just hoping they know where they’re going.

Follow-up research on obedience across decades of studies confirms that obedience to authority can regularly override personal moral judgement, with the exact rate varying based on proximity to the authority figure and how legitimate their commands appear. You’re probably not as independent-minded as you think you are.

The Self-Imposed Prison

The problems arise with Authority Misinfluence when you’re guilty of living a life restricted by historical, dogmatic, or self-imposed rules that do you no good. Perhaps it’s time to look at your life and ask yourself, are you doing merely what others expect? Are you following rules that made sense for previous generations but don’t make sense for you? Are you living by someone else’s definition of success, happiness, or a good life?

If you’re always living by other people’s rules, aren’t you also leading the life others want you to lead instead of the one that’s right for you? Perhaps you need to look at where the shackles can come off. Where you need to stop passively doing what you’re told. Where you need to start living by your own rules instead.

Let me give you another example. I had a patient, let’s call her Michelle, who came from a family of doctors. Her parents were doctors. Her siblings were doctors. Everyone expected her to be a doctor. So she became a doctor. She hated it. Absolutely hated it. But she kept doing it because that’s what was expected. That’s what her family did. That’s what everyone told her was the right path.

Eventually, Michelle made herself so ill with stress and unhappiness that she ended up in my office. We talked about what she actually wanted to do. She wanted to be a photographer. Had wanted to be a photographer since she was a teenager. But photography wasn’t “serious” enough. It wasn’t what doctors’ children did. It wasn’t following the rules.

Michelle eventually left medicine. It took her two years and several more visits to my office, but she did it. Her family was upset. Some of them still don’t speak to her. But she’s happy. She’s successful. She’s living her life instead of the life someone else designed for her.

The Permission Problem

Here’s something you need to understand. You’re waiting for permission that’s never going to come. You’re waiting for some authority figure to tell you it’s okay to change careers, okay to move cities, okay to end that relationship, okay to start that business, okay to live differently. But that permission isn’t coming. Because most authority figures benefit from you staying exactly where you are, following exactly the rules you’re following, living exactly the life you’re living.

Your employer benefits from you not questioning your career path. Your family benefits from you conforming to their expectations. Society benefits from you following the well-trodden path. So why would any of them give you permission to deviate?

The uncomfortable truth is that you don’t need their permission. You never did. The rules you’re following, at least half of them are rules you’ve chosen to follow. You could choose differently. You just don’t, because choosing differently feels like breaking rules, and you’ve spent your entire life learning that breaking rules is bad.

But sometimes breaking rules is necessary. Sometimes the rules are wrong. Sometimes the authority is misguided. Sometimes what everyone expects you to do is completely wrong for who you are and what you want. And in those times, waiting for permission is just another way of staying stuck.

The Questions

So let me ask you some questions. Are you just doing what’s expected? Have you even thought about what you actually want, or are you so busy following the prescribed path that you’ve never stopped to consider whether it’s the right path for you?

Where do you want to take the lead in your life? Where have you been waiting for someone else to make decisions for you? Where have you been following rules that don’t actually serve you?

Which rules would you change to live a better life? I’m not telling you to break rules just for the sake of it. I’m not suggesting you become some kind of rule-breaking rebel without a cause. But some rules are holding you back. Some expectations are limiting you. Some authority figures don’t actually know what’s best for you. So which rules need to change?

The Reality

Look, I’m not telling you to reject all authority and live as some kind of hermit following only your own counsel. That’s not practical and it’s not wise. Some authorities know what they’re talking about. Some rules exist for good reasons. Some expectations are perfectly sensible.

What I’m telling you is to think about it. Evaluate the rules you’re following. Question the authorities you’re obeying. Consider whether the expectations placed on you actually align with what you want from your life. And when you find rules that don’t serve you, when you encounter authorities who don’t know what they’re talking about, when you realise you’re living by expectations that aren’t your own, that’s when you need to make different choices.

This requires courage. It’s uncomfortable to go against authority. It’s scary to break rules, even rules that don’t make sense. It’s difficult to disappoint people who have expectations of you. But the alternative is spending your entire life as a passenger, following other people’s maps to destinations you never wanted to reach.

The choice is yours. Keep following blindly, or start thinking for yourself. Keep waiting for permission, or recognise you don’t need it. Keep living by rules that were designed for someone else’s life, or start creating rules that work for yours.

You don’t need to become a rule-breaking rebel. You just need to become someone who thinks about which rules make sense before automatically following them. That’s not rebellion. That’s wisdom. That’s taking control of your own life instead of letting others control it for you.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what you need to start doing right now.

Further Reading

• Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. Harper & Row.
• Burger, J.M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would People Still Obey Today? American Psychologist, 64(1), 1-11.
• Blass, T. (1999). The Milgram Paradigm After 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know About Obedience to Authority. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(5), 955-978.
• Cialdini, R.B. (2006). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Harper Collins.
• Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from Freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.