Why do people hate authority

The difference between the amount they gave when free versus when controlled was larger, on average, in those who displayed greater connectivity between those brain areas. Then, when the games ended, each participant answered some questions to gauge their feelings from the exercise. Participants who met all of these criteria were determined to be more rebellious, or control averse.

On the flip side, more compliant people just might not have the skill set to rebel, a study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology found. Balanced leadership is crucial to keeping any organization well-oiled, and autonomy often pays dividends when bosses are able to strike the balance between empowering employees and condoning a free-for-all. A study out of the University of Birmingham last year found a connection between worker autonomy and job satisfaction.

To effectively grant autonomy, leaders have to provide employees with tools and training that will allow them to do their jobs successfully without hand-holding. People who challenge authority may simply have more ways of expressing themselves in order to get out of things they don't want to do. Both the people who followed the instructions and the few who refused to carry them out showed resistance, but those who successfully disobeyed, labeled "heroes" by Milgram, had "a set of skills for resisting authority figures," Hollander told Mic.

How to rebel: In his analysis, Hollander lists the six most common resistance tactics or "stop-tries" that hero participants displayed: silence or hesitation, groaning or sighing, laughing nervously, challenging the authority figure, addressing the person being electrocuted and finally, refusing to carry on.

Participants who followed instructions also exhibited some of these behaviors, but their resistance never escalated to the point of refusal. The stronger the synchronous activation was in these regions, the more likely were the participants to show defiant behavior view more.

Control aversion -- the urge to rebel against control over one's decisions -- can be explained by connectivity between two regions of the brain as well as behavioral measures of distrust and lack of understanding, according to a study of university students published in JNeurosci.

Individual differences in control aversion are well-documented and can interfere with important decisions, such as whether or not to vaccinate a child.

There have been studies on how to devise more-effective communication that doesn't turn people away. In the new study, 51 university students had their brains scanned while they played a trading game in which they divided money between themselves and a peer.

In some rounds, the peer could specify a minimum requested amount and therefore control just how freely the participants were to divvy up their assets. At the end of the game, the participants rated a few items on a questionnaire that was designed to measure how much the participants' decisions were influenced by factors highlighted in previous research.

These factors included negative feelings such as anger and motivation to restore one's freedom. Other factors were trust and understanding, which were measured by items including, "When Player A requests a minimum of generosity, he distrusts me and I dislike that," and, "I understand when Player A requests a minimum of generosity.

But if their peers requested a minimum, all but 10 participants tended to give less than they normally did, though to varying degrees. Responses to questionnaires revealed that in the controlled conditions, the more someone perceived distrust or the less understanding they had, the more they reduced the money they gave away. These factors seemed to influence participants' decisions more than how angry they felt or how badly they wanted to restore their freedom.