Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell

I had the pleasure of reading the book “Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell over the spring break. I always found Gladwell to be an engaging author especially with his previous books “Blink” & "Outliers".  With “Talking to Strangers” Gladwell takes us into several case studies and true stories where he derives his three key factors which generally make it difficult for us to properly understand strangers.

Below is a summary of these three factors- 

We default to Truth

Gladwell cites Tim Levine’s Truth-Default theory which states that our general operating assumption is that people we are dealing with are honest. When we meet somebody, when we speak with them, our first reaction towards them is that whatever they are stating is true. Most of us do not start by assuming that what is being stated is false. This is how we have adapted because the effort that we have to put if we have to assume that the other person is not stating the truth is significant. Imagine if we had to verify and validate each statement that the other person was making. 

Levine states that “We believe someone not because we have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. We believe someone because we don’t have enough doubts about them.”

Most of us see it this way that defaulting to truth is the logical thing because lies are rare. Statistics say that lies and con men are rare but for some people they are everywhere. Gladwell calls them Holy Fools. They play a key role as they are ones who are whistleblowers but everyone could not be this. A Holy Fool since he sees everything with skepticism is not generally a very social person. Human beings never developed accurate skills to detect deception because there is no significant advantage in it.

We have an Illusion of Transparency

Gladwell goes through a Friends episode where Ross finds out that Monica and Chandler were together. Gladwell states that the facial expressions on all of their faces were exactly as we would expect. The author believes that even if we were to watch that episode without audio we would still understand what each of the actors was feeling. However in real life not everyone has expressions that we can judge. We assume that the facial expressions are a window to exactly what person is feeling or thinking but for some it is not the case. 

Coupling

Gladwell states that first 2 errors that we make - default to truth and illusion of transparency - have to with our inability to understand the stranger as an individual but we multiply this problem by not understanding the context of the stranger which he calls coupling. Significant changes can be observed by changing the context in which people operate in. This is even more difficult to decipher about another person because to understand this you have to invest even more time in understanding the situation and circumstances of the individual. There are no shortcuts that we can hedge on.

Gladwell closes the book by saying that - To assume the best about others is a trait that has created modern society. Occasions when our trust gets violated are rare and tragic. But abandoning our trust in all as a defense against deception is a worse choice. We should accept our limits in understanding strangers and exercise restraint and humility in all contacts.

With our lives getting more and more intertwined with others it is becoming imperative for us that we consider these 3 key messages in all our interactions. We should accept that we are not the best judge of others and nor are we perfect in expressing what we truly feel inside. It is best to try and know others, their contexts so that we can get a step closer in understanding them and helping them in whatever way we can.

-Amit Juneja