Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, by Malcolm Gladwell
Rating:: 4/5
Favorite Quote:
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“You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them”
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I’m always fascinated and provoked by Gladwell’s work (Blink, The Tipping
Point, Outliers and many more...).
This appears to be a contentious book: the readers and reviewers have
either hated it or loved it, nothing in between. His books are so thought
provoking to me. He leaves me thinking about things I never would have thought
about, in ways I never would have considered. I like how he gets me to look at
things from different perspectives. This book left me with so much to think
about and I had to stop many times to just think about or research topics or
ideas further.
I am torn on this book. I did really enjoy reading it, but I did not agree with everything he said, especially in the areas regarding racism and sexual abuse. The situation involving Sandra Bland:
The tale begins with Sandra Bland, the African American woman who in July
2015 was stopped by a traffic cop in a small Texas town. She was just about to
begin a job at Prairie View A&M University, when a police car accelerated
up behind her. Doing what almost all of us would have done, she moved aside to
let the car pass. And just like most of us in that situation, she didn’t bother
indicating. It was on that technicality that the cop, Brian Encinia, ordered
her to pull over.
Agitated and annoyed by Encinia’s ploy, Bland lit a cigarette to calm
herself down. Encinia demanded that she put it out. When she protested, he
instructed her to get out of the car and, after some minor resistance on
Bland’s part, she was arrested and put in jail. Three days later, while still
being held, she killed herself.
I think there was a lot of truth in much of the things he talked about
such as how we naturally default to truth as it is the more likely situation.
We can totally miss or ignore something that is right in front of our faces
because that something rarely happens. So, we reason it away. It couldn't be
that. Also, how we judge and evaluate people and feel like we can read people
or know what they are all about and we often have it all wrong. We don't think
people have us all figured out though because we are very complex, and our
thoughts and actions are based around so much; others are just as complex.
I also feel like, in this book, he made some generalizations that I didn't
feel fit in order to make his point and he oversimplifies some things and made
some people's actions seem okay based on
miscommunication, when they very clearly were not okay.
The other thing I don't like about this book, is that the topics seem to
be scatter-shot. The topics covered are not at all about talking to strangers.
They cover a wide range of topics, and do not seem to have an overall theme.
For example, the topic of coupling doesn't seem to have anything at all to do
with talking to strangers. Why was this topic (and others) included in the
book? Only because it is an interesting psychological phenomenon?
"If suicide is coupled, then it isn’t simply the act of depressed people.
It’s the act of depressed people at a particular moment of extreme
vulnerability and in combination with a particular, readily available lethal
means"
But, still, I couldn't look away from this book. I always feel, why he has
become something of a pop-nonfiction writer because he definitely knows how to
capture your attention. It's got some psychology, a bit of anthropology, a
touch of politics, a dash of espionage...
We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the
flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do
that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the
stranger is easy.
If I can convince you of one thing in this book, let it be this: Strangers
are not easy... We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on
the flimsiest of clues. Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what
do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.
In the end, he brings all this information, all these studies and examples
together to leave us with an idea that is nothing new, but that I think we are
all too quick to forget: people are more complex than they first appear. Don’t
judge a book by its cover, if you will. Some people are assholes; others are just
socially-challenged (me!). Some people are guilty; others just get that shifty
look when walking through the metal detectors at the airport (also me!).
I thought, initially, that the book would be about everyday conversations
during everyday interactions. Not at all. If that's what the book was about,
then stranger and I might be on a date by now. The book is really about the
assumptions that we make about other people, and how those assumptions can be
drastically wrong. It is about belief systems, and how we react when we
encounter evidence that is contrary to those beliefs. Malcolm Gladwell took me
into worlds that I had never even considered.
Bottom line: We’re generally terrible at understanding the actions of
strangers, and when things take a turn for the worse/unexpected, we blame the
stranger.
Got it. Feel it.
Highly recommended if you enjoy studying human nature.
SO, WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
And what's the lesson here?
How do we change our credulous behavior, or should we?
How can we read people and trust strangers to act right by us?
We could start by no longer penalizing each other for defaulting to
truth... We should also accept the limits of our ability to decipher
strangers... But far more important than a little grace and humility over what
we cannot do, we should be clear about what we can [do]... There are clues to
making sense of the stranger. But attending to them requires humility and
thoughtfulness and a willingness to look beyond the stranger and take time and place
and context into account.
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.
SOME TAKEAWAYS:
1. THE DEFAULT TO TRUTH PROBLEM We do not behave, in other words, like
sober-minded scientists, slowing 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
2. THE TRANSPARENCY PROBLEM Transparency is a myth. How people are feeling inside often does NOT perfectly match how they
appear on the outside, which means we are misjudging other's intentions. This
doesn't matter as much with close friends where you understand what their
idiosyncratic expressions mean. When we are confronted with a stranger, we have
to substitute an idea - a stereotype - for direct experience. The requirement
of humanity means that we have to tolerate an enormous amount of error. That is
the paradox of talking to strangers. We need to talk to them. But we're
terrible at it... we're not always honest with each other about just how
terrible at it we are.
3. THE MISMATCH PROBLEM We are bad lie-detectors in those situations when the
person we're judging is mismatched. A mismatch is where someone's level of truthfulness does NOT correspond
with the way they look. I think someone is honest based on how they look and
act but in actuality they are lying, and I can't tell the difference.
4. THE COUPLING PHENOMENON The first set of
mistakes we make with strangers... have to do with our inability to make sense
of the stranger as an individual. But there's a second category of error that
has to do with our inability to appreciate the context in which the stranger
operates... Coupling is the idea that behaviors are linked to very specific
circumstances and conditions.
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Shi'tare'
#TheKatareGirl
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