Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell
3-Sentence Summary:
There will inevitably be times where we have to communicate with strangers, but we struggle with various aspects of doing so.
We think we’re much better judges of people than we are, we often ‘default to truth’ in situations of uncertainty, we complicate interactions by using alcohol irresponsibly, we read too much into facial expressions, and we persecute others for making these same mistakes.
Instead, we should forgive others for ‘defaulting to truth’ realising that its advantages (e.g. giving people the benefit of the doubt) outweigh the effect of rare tragic cases, we should accept our own inabilities to decipher the intent of actions of people accurately, and we should put barriers into place to cap the downside of these things, where possible.
Notes:
The book is about the translation strategies we use with communicating with strangers.
The first question is, "why can't we tell when someone is lying?"
The second question is, "How is it that meeting someone can make you a worse judge of their character?" e.g. Chamberlain meeting Hitler and presuming he was a ‘good guy’. e.g. Court cases where computers are 25% better at predicting re-offenders than judges.
We think we know a lot about others based on their actions, even judging them more than we judge ourselves. E.g. We think word association tests don't say much about ourselves when we take them, but read a lot into them when looking at the results of other people.
In situations of uncertainty with regards to judging whether people are lying, we 'default to truth' more often than not.
However, this is true only until a point where there is overwhelming evidence of someone being untruthful. e.g. Spies get away with their deceptions for years, in spite of clues along the way, but only until there is overwhelming evidence.
Evolutionarily, we default to the truth because its advantageousness to efficient communication outweighs the effect of the rare case of deception.
The 'holy fool' has the role in society of being that person to call out the deception. e.g. Whistleblowers. e.g. The child in the story of the Emperor's new clothes
Defaulting to truth occurs more when the alternative is extreme, since it requires more of a leap to believe the opposite. e.g. Cases where men who are overly friendly with young people and spend a lot of time with them turn out to be paedophiles. It's much easier to just presume they're being friendly than to think they're abusing young people. Again, this is only until the evidence of the opposite is overwhelming.
We tend to wonder, "How dis people not see it?" in cases like the above, and persecute people for that, not realising that we actually want them to default to truth for the most part, in spite of these tragic outlier cases.
We think we're better at making decisions about people when we have more info and specifically, can see their faces. E.g. Judges in court cases would prefer to see the faces of the people they're questioning, in spite of this actually decreasing accuracy of the rulings.
But often, facial expressions are misleading.
The emotions associated with facial displays vary drastically in different societies.
Also, we often don't make the faces associated with emotions in actual situations. e.g. When we're surprised in a real situation, we often don't have the typically thought-of "surprised" face.
There are people for whom their expressions are generally 'mismatched' meaning they could be lying and showing no signs or vice versa. We're bad at judging those people but good at judging those whose facial expressions match those that society expects. But we obviously don't know which people fall into each category.
The effect of alcohol used to be seen as disinhibiting, but recent thought is that it is actually more related to narrowing our emotional and mental focus of vision - myopia.
How alcohol affects our interaction will be largely dependant on culture and the drinking customs. E.g. Some tribes will have rituals with rules of not drinking alone, only having one drink at a time, and only on weekends.
This differs drastically from somewhere like a college campus, where alcohol is abundant and without limitations of when, where, and how much to drink.
The latter has huge implications around sexual consent. Can we expect proper consent when people are in an alcohol-rich environment, in which they are emotionally focussed on that one moment, and where they may not even be able to remember it, such as in common cases of 'blackout'?
This is further complicated by the fact that women get to this point at a much lower alcohol consumption level than men.
When talking to strangers, we may never know the real truth, and going to extreme measures to find out can actually hinder that rather than help. E.g. Torture can actually lead to false confessions.
'Coupling' is the idea that people's behaviour is connected to the context they're in. Where we presume that if we removed the person from the context, they'd find a way of doing the same thing, this is not often the case. E.g. In previous centuries, a lot of suicide was done through the type of gas that was used in houses. Some thought that changing to a less deadly type of gas would mean people would just find another way of committing suicide, but in fact, when they changed it, suicide decreased dramatically.
There are examples of going against 'default to truth'. E.g. Training police officers to be overly suspicious, patrolling and checking people randomly and more frequently, as well as looking for other crimes along with those that they're suspicious of. Instead of helping, this can lead to worse mistakes in communications with others, such as unlawful arrests and the eventual distrust of law enforcement in general.
In the modern world, we have to talk to strangers, but we often make mistakes, so what should we do?
Don't penalise each other for defaulting to truth, as its benefits outweigh its downsides - We all want to be given the benefit of the doubt.
Accept our own inability to decipher others accurately.
Put barriers in place, where possible, to help remove some of the potential downsides of defaulting to truth.
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