Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Source of book: Borrowed from my brother

 

I have been a fan of Malcolm Gladwell for a long time. I’m pretty sure (although I don’t trust my memory) that I ran across him first on ESPN, in one of his sports debates with Bill Simmons. Or maybe it was on Slate back in the early aughts. Whatever the case, I always found him thought provoking. 

 

In fact, I think the best way to describe how I feel about Gladwell is to say that, no matter what, he has always made me think. I haven’t always agreed with his conclusions (and some things in this book are examples), but he consistently takes interesting information and examines it in a new light. In some cases, I find his prescriptions a bit too far to the left for me. In others, too far to the right. And in a few cases, I just scratch my head. But in others, I can say that he literally changed my belief about something. Specifically, Blink was the book that really made me understand how implicit bias works. His discussion of good and bad relationships in that book was spot on as well - something that I have observed doing divorce cases. 

 

Outliers was also good, if not on the same level as Blink. As I concluded back when I read it, I still think that his observations were excellent, but his prescriptions were less good. Probably because there is no easy cure for the way that circumstances continue to drive outcomes. 

 Talking to Strangers is likewise a very thoughtful and intriguing book. I probably would have loved it...five years ago. As in, before Trump ate the brains of most of my right-leaning friends and family. Not that anything about the book looks particularly wrong (although the chapter on Sandra Bland has some issues - more about that later.) It’s more that the general issues of reading strangers seems secondary to the greater question right now which is “How the hell do you even communicate with people who believe things that are obviously false and refuse to accept evidence?” 

 

This is not Gladwell’s fault. 

 

The book is fine, and has a lot of good stuff in it. For example, I loved his argument (well supported by evidence) that the human default is to assume people are telling the truth, and that this human trait is actually an evolutionary advantage. Human society requires a certain level of trust, and the occasional failure to detect liars is generally less damaging than being unable to trust anyone whatsoever. 

 

This is related to one of the fundamental ideas of the book: Our truth detecting works well for people who fit the normal pattern. That is, people who look you in the eye, act unafraid, and seem straightforward and honest usually are. And people who are being shifty and nervous very often are lying. We get fooled on the ones who go against the grain. My father-in-law told me something I have never forgotten back when I was clerking for him:

 

“Some people lie far better than other people tell the truth.” 

 

That’s the problem. Sociopaths (such as...Trump and Bill Gothard) lie without looking like they are lying. But also, some people who tell the truth are flustered and nervous and otherwise “not normal.” Gladwell uses the example of Amanda Knox for this second one. For the first, he uses a number of spies - double agents and so on - who lied well. And also, of course, Hitler, because the whole “I trust Hitler” statement from Neville Chamberlain remains the most infamous example of failing to detect a pathological liar in history. For Gladwell, understanding the blind spots in our truth detection is key to doing better. And also, better reliance on more objective, hands off information. (His best example on that is Bernie Madoff - the people who distrusted him never met him, but just looked at the numbers, which obviously didn’t add up.)  

 

Let’s dive into a few key quotes. 

 

To snap out of truth-default mod requires what Levine calls a “trigger.” A trigger is not the same as a suspicion, or the first sliver of doubt. We fall out of truth-default mode only when the case against our initial assumption becomes definitive. We do not behave, in other words, like sober-minded scientists, slowly gathering evidence of the truth or falsity of something before reaching a conclusion. We do the opposite. We start by believing. And we stop believing only when our doubts and misgivings rise to the point where we can no longer explain them away. 

 

This is not, as Gladwell points out, splitting hairs. It is a profound understanding of human behavior. It actually explains a lot of why the Right still believes Trump despite overwhelming evidence. They have not yet come to the point where they are unable to maintain the cognitive dissonance. This point also gives some hope that eventually that point might be reached, maybe when Trump dies and can no longer lie. 

 

Another example of this comes from the horrifying sagas of Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar. So many failed to see the seemingly obvious abuse. In some cases, it took place while parents were watching. These are not horrible parents. Quite the contrary. But they were and are human. Even some of the victims didn’t realize they were being abused, because of the credibility of Nassar. One stood by him until so many others came forward - it took that much for her to realize what he had done to her. As Gladwell summarizes her testimony in Nassar’s trial:

 

I believed in you always until I couldn’t anymore. Isn’t that an almost perfect statement of default to truth?

 

That’s a pretty good explanation too for my eventual realization that I had been lied to by my religious tradition. You want to believe they actually believe in following Christ, until you just can’t anymore.

 

Another rather mind-blowing observation in this book is that humans think certain faces mean certain things. Except they are wrong. For example, humans who are actually surprised do not make the surprised face. 

 

“The participants in all conditions grossly overestimated their surprise expressivity,” Schutzwohl wrote. Why? The “inferred their likely facial expressions to the surprising event from...folk-psychological beliefs about emotion-face associations.” Folk psychology is the kind of crude psychology we glean from cultural sources such as sitcoms. But that is not the way things happen in real life. Transparency is a myth - an idea we’ve picked up from watching too much television and reading too many novels where the hero’s “jaw dropped with astonishment” or “eyes went wide with surprise.” Schutzwohl went on: “The participants apparently reasoned that, since they felt surprised, and since surprise is associated with a characteristic facial display, they must have shown this display. In most cases, this inference was erroneous.” 

 

The idea of “folk psychology” is spot on. Too many people (often, I call them “clients”) go with a gut feeling which is really just folk beliefs about how someone should act given an emotion. This will lead to trusting someone with HUGE red flags, whether an abusive partner or a scam artist. 

 

Gladwell is right that we do tend to get these beliefs from culture. But that isn’t necessarily bad, just unhelpful. I am a huge fan of live theater, and thus understand that communicating emotions to a room full of strangers won’t work if the actors act like normal human beings. Projecting requires the use of “folk psychology” - these cultural symbols of emotion. That’s fine. But it is helpful to understand that other people are not generally actors trying to communicate across a stage. They are normal people who don’t match the cultural symbols. As long as we understand that, and refuse to rely on exaggerated acting, we will do better. 

 

Specifically, we need to look at ACTIONS, not demeanor. As Saint James said, “I will show you my faith by what I do.” I’ll mention in this connection that the discussion on bail in the book is excellent. Judges turned out to be terrible at predicting whether defendants would jump bail - computers did far better. Now, algorithms have their own issues, as they can often encode prejudices - that’s something that designers need to be aware of and fight against. But humans appear to be worse when they can see defendants - and unconscious bias ends up being a huge factor. 

 

Also excellent was the discussion of how liars act. People who occasionally lie do show the usual “tells” most of the time. I myself am a terrible liar - anyone could pick up on it. But true liars, the pathological ones (like….Trump) don’t look away. They leverage all of the folk psychology to manipulate. As journalist Michael Ocrant, who investigated Madoff but failed to see the obvious said later, “If he’s running a Ponzi scheme, he’s either the best actor I’ve ever seen, or a total sociopath.” 

 

And that is the point. Sociopaths are fantastic actors. Learning to detect sociopathy is perhaps one of the great challenges facing our nation. In particular, conservative white religious people seem to fall for an endless succession of sociopaths, from televangelists like Joel Osteen to cult leaders like Bill Gothard to fascist hucksters like Trump. 

 

As mentioned above, the flip side to the sociopaths are those who, for some reason, cannot tell the truth and look like they are telling the truth to save their lives. People like Amanda Knox. Sadly, many of these people fall on the non-neurotypical scale, which is one reason that people on the autism spectrum are far too often brutalized or shot by police who read their non-typical responses as a threat. And why so many innocent people are convicted. 

 

Are we sending perfectly harmless people to prison while they await trial simply because they don’t look right? We all accept the flaws and inaccuracies of institutional judgment when we believe that those mistakes are random. But Tim Levine’s research suggest that they aren’t random - that we have built a world that systematically discriminates against a class of people who, through no fault of their own, violate our ridiculous ideas about transparency. 

 

I think again of my father-in-law and his sadness at having to accept poor outcomes for some clients, simply because they couldn’t tell the truth convincingly - and were often up against sociopaths who lied well. 

 

I have very mixed feelings about the chapter on college rapes. On the one hand, there are some fascinating observations about exactly what factors come together with alcohol to create antisocial behavior. The idea that alcohol doesn’t so much lower inhibitions as create a kind of “myopia,” where the immediate emotions, concerns, and goals dominate longer term considerations is interesting, and I think accurate. 

 

One of the fascinating studies cited showed that by priming drinkers at a bar with different information, they ended up going different directions when drunk. For example, given the suggestion of sex, but lacking a condom, drunks would be more likely to ignore the risks. That’s expected. But unexpected was if primed with information about AIDS, they were less likely to have sex drunk than when sober. That’s...interesting. 

 

Another example was definitely spot on. Our emotions are accentuated by alcohol, the unpleasant as well as pleasant. Thus, on an evening of eating and drinking with good friends and having fun (remember that, pre-Covid?), a little ethanol can definitely enhance the good feelings. (For us introverts, this is particularly desirable. Booze takes the edge off the long-term fear of being awkward, while bringing the pleasure of good company to the front.) But also, as any fan of Country Music knows, you can’t drink the girl who dumped you off your mind. You just get sadder. 

 

This is exactly why I do not touch alcohol when I am in a bad place. Gladwell is right about this.

 

My reservations and mixed feelings about this section is that Gladwell focuses on the circumstances. Again, it’s not that he is wrong, but that his analysis, despite his efforts to the contrary, seems to deflect away from the problem of predatory males. 

 

Gladwell is right that frat culture is a huge problem. And that the specifics of frat house binge drinking will indeed cause bad results. This is exactly the same argument - and it is compelling - for why murders and suicides go down when you reduce access to firearms. (More about this in a bit…) Personally, I would ban fraternities altogether. I think they contribute nothing positive to society, at best serving to create Good-ol’-boy networks, and at worst, encouraging antisocial behavior in young people. And kudos to Gladwell for emphasizing that we need to focus on getting males to stop putting themselves in positions that increase their odds of doing something criminal. And I certainly will not argue against teaching our children that they should avoid getting blackout drunk. 

 

[Sidenote here: I have been buzzed, and I have had a bit more than I should on occasion. But I have never come close to blacking out. Except that one time I took a benadryl - no alcohol that night either - and realized that I react badly to it. And good lord, this book spends a lot of time on the research around being apparently functional but not remembering things. Scary, crazy stuff, and plenty of incentive to keep moderation in mind. Also, the amount of booze that some people put away to get to that blackout level is mind blowing. Particularly when it is 100 pound females and literally dozens of drinks. How they didn’t die is beyond me.]

 

But that can’t be all of the picture. Eliminating the triggers should be done. But we also need to address the problem of toxic male culture. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong about what Gladwell says, but the incompleteness - caused by the specific focus of the book - made me a bit uncomfortable. 

 

Another example of that discomfort is one I already alluded to, in the case of Sandra Bland. Fortunately, having read Blink, I know that Gladwell is not minimizing the effect of implicit bias. And I know from other writing that he has advocated for significant reforms to policing in general. 

 

In this book, he focuses on just one facet of the reform question, which is to question why a cop was doing the “everyone is potentially guilty” thing - pulling people over on pretexts - in an area where crime is low. Again, Gladwell is right. This is horrible policing, and did indeed lead predictably to bad outcomes. His point (supported by research) that only a very few locations justify heavy-handed policing, and even then, primarily to confiscate firearms isn’t a bad one. But it also fails to get into the underlying assumptions of our policing. 

 

I feel bad for blaming Gladwell here, because he has a specific focus in this book, and isn’t trying to minimize the other issues. 

 

The problem is that I worry that people on the Right will read this book and it will affirm their belief that cops aren’t biased. And then use it as ammunition against any questioning of our policing. Again, having read Blink, I know full well that Gladwell gets this. 

 

Just a couple more ideas that I want to discuss. I’ve mentioned the concept of “coupling” earlier, and wanted to return to it. This phenomenon is that circumstances - places in particular - tend to “couple” with outcomes. The most fascinating story here is that of the suicide of Sylvia Plath. For a brief period in time, suicide by gas was extremely popular. At the time, “gas” wasn’t the “natural gas” we use now, a combination of methane and a few others plus an odorant - which will give you a headache but is unlikely to kill you. Rather, it was coal gas, which had a high percentage of carbon monoxide. So, stick your head in the oven, go to sleep forever, rather painlessly. 

 

Where this gets interesting is that once they changed the gas, suicide rates went down. Contrary to popular belief, suicidal people don’t just “find another way.” Rather, they often just...don’t commit suicide. Same thing when they made it harder to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. The same way that prostitutes actually don’t just move one street over if you make them stop using a certain street. The behavior is “coupled” to the location. 

 

That’s….weird and unexpected. 

 

But the research bears it out. As I noted above, reducing access to firearms reduces suicides, particularly among males, who are more likely to “couple” the firearm and the suicide, the same way gas and female suicide were linked. 

 

I will need to think about this one a bit more, I think. 

 

I do have one final thought. While it doesn’t come at the end of the book, Gladwell makes what I think is a perfect ending and summarizing statement. 

 

Whatever it is we are trying to find out about the strangers in our midst is not robust. The “truth” about Amanda Knox or Jerry Sandusky or KSM is not some hard and shiny object that can be extracted if only we dig deep enough and look hard enough. The thing we want to learn about a stranger is fragile. If we tread carelessly, it will crumple under our feet. And from that follows a second cautionary note: we need to accept that the search to understand a stranger has real limits. We will never know the whole truth. We have to be satisfied with something short of that. The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility. How many of the crises and controversies I have described would have been prevented had we taken those lessons to heart?

 

There is a lot of truth to that. In the end, Gladwell’s prescriptions are pretty good. Approach our interactions with caution and humility. Don’t just go on gut reactions to how people act, but confirm with verifiable evidence. Have a third party, outside of the situation, take a look from a distance. Reevaluate when circumstances seem to repeat, in case there is a systemic issue that can be remedied. Understand our biases and blind spots, and actively work to overcome them. 

 

As usual, Gladwell made me think, introduced me to new concepts and evidence to support them, and shed some light on tough issues. I never agree with him on everything, but he has changed my mind for the better over the years, and helped me understand the world we live in better.