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And if your daughter were passed out on a bench in Penn Station in the middle of the night, Pete is the kind of guy you’d want sitting close by. He would unobtrusively keep an eye out for her, without being creepy.

On this night, Pete noticed that a disheveled, shoeless man was standing over the drunk woman, rubbing himself inappropriately. Pete and his friend yelled at the man to get away. He ignored them. Pete saw a policeman nearby and walked over to let him know what was happening. The cop said something to the effect that he couldn’t take care of everyone passed out in Penn Station.

At this point, Pete had a choice. Go along to get along? Or rock the boat?

Armed with the courage of several beers, Pete questioned the officer. “Well, you should take care of her.” When the officer again refused, Pete grew angry. “That’s fucked up.”

From the policeman’s standpoint, Pete and his friend became the threat, not the man standing over the passed-out woman. Pete was angry and failing to sit down and shut up. Two other cops arrived. The first officer threatened to give Pete a citation for disorderly conduct. When Pete protested, one of the new cops pointed to a plate glass window and told Pete: “You see that window? I am going to put your head through that if you don’t shut up.”

“Are you kidding me?” Pete responded. “May I have your badge number?” The cop told Pete and his friend that if they didn’t walk away they’d be arrested.

Pete finally backed down and went back to his seat. The homeless man by this point had walked away. The woman’s companions came back, and thanked Pete and his friend profusely for looking out for their passed out friend. Pete and his friend caught their train.

The point is that in the real world, questioning authority takes real courage and has risks. It is no wonder that questioning was so difficult in Milgram’s laboratory.

One can understand why police officers are so insistent on obedience. They often must seize control of a situation that could quickly spin dangerously out of control. The best way for them to seize control is to assert their authority by using a commanding voice and imposing physical presence. Unfortunately, however, they often internalize the norm of requiring obedience, so that any questioning of them brings reflexive pushback. And then they sometimes go too far. Pete got off easy.

Others have created more of a stir. Harvard Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates was arrested on his own porch for loudly questioning the behavior of Cambridge police officers who came to investigate a supposed break-in at his house. The charge was disorderly conduct for “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place”—his front porch—“directed at a uniformed police officer . . . [which] caused citizens passing by this location to stop and take notice while appearing surprised and alarmed.”11 The charges were quickly dropped, but Gates’s experience became a national lesson in how police officers do not take kindly to boisterous questioning and opposition. (When President Obama initially took Gates’s side in the conflict, it also became a national lesson in the political costs of questioning the actions of the police. Obama recanted within forty-eight hours and then hosted the famous “beer summit” between Gates and the arresting officer.)

Of course police officers are not the only people in authority who insist on obedience and make it difficult to question them. You may remember the story about my third-grade teacher, with which I began this book. She would tell it differently, I’m sure. To her, it was about a headstrong kid who refused to play by the rules. To me, it is a story about how questioning authority brings costs.

It is also worth emphasizing that the costs of questioning increase if you are already marginalized or at risk. A friend of mine—Ivy League educated, a graduate of Harvard Business School, a business executive in Chicago—tells me that he’s warned his children that they should always obey whatever a police officer