In another study, we asked 155 participants to think about a series of ethical dilemmas — for example, calling in sick to work to attend a baseball game. One group was told to think about these misdeeds from the perspective of a person deciding whether to commit them, and to imagine receiving advice from a colleague suggesting they do it or not. Another group took the opposite side, and thought about them from the perspective of someone advising another person about whether or not to do each deed.

Those in the first group were strongly influenced by the advice they received. When they were urged to engage in the misdeed, they said they would be more comfortable doing so than when they were advised not to. Their average reported comfort level fell around the midpoint of a 7-point scale after receiving unethical advice, but fell closer to the low end after receiving ethical advice.

However, participants in the “advisory” role thought that their opinions would hold little sway over the other person’s decision, assuming that participants in the first group would feel equally comfortable regardless of whether they had received unethical or ethical advice.

Taken together, our research, which was recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggests that we often fail to recognize the power of social pressure when we are the ones doing the pressuring.

Notably, this tendency may be especially pronounced in cultures like the United States’, where independence is so highly valued. American culture idolizes individuals who stand up to peer pressure. But that doesn’t mean that most do; in fact, such idolatry may hide, and thus facilitate, compliance under social pressure, especially when we are the ones putting on the pressure.

Consider the roles in the Milgram experiments: Most people have probably fantasized about being one of the subjects and standing up to the pressure. But in daily life, we play the role of the metaphorical experimenter in those studies as often as we play the participant. We bully. We pressure others to blow off work to come out for a drink or stiff a waitress who is having a bad night. These suggestions are not always wrong or unethical, but they may impact others’ behaviors more than we realize.

If we do not recognize the extent to which our suggestions and actions are likely to affect others’ behavior, we may be careless about the things we say and do. On the other hand, we may fail to speak up for what we think is right.