Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

The failure to communicate accurately with one another is the subject of Gladwell’s latest compendium of anecdotes and scientific studies that can explain them. Looking at incidents ranging from confrontations between black Americans and police, to the inability of supposedly expert authorities to evaluate criminal behavior and lies, Gladwell argues that human beings are more prone to misunderstand each other than the reverse, and he believes he knows why.

Gladwell documents several tendencies in assessing strangers that have been discovered by research. He reports that our default assumption is that a person - even a stranger - is telling the truth if his or her demeanor seems persuasive. If there is a “match” between the message show more and the facial expressions and appearance of the person delivering the message, we tend to give such people the benefit of the doubt; we prefer to think we are not subject to being deceived, and respond accordingly. On the other hand, if a person is a stranger, perhaps someone with whom we do not share a culture and history, and whose language, behavior, and appearance differ from our own, we might just as easily default to distrust.

Does this sound a little glib and empirically messy? Once again, as in previous books, Gladwell takes a Procrustean approach to data and conclusions. (In Greek mythology, Procrustes either cut up or stretched out his guests to fit his iron bed. Therefore a “procrustean bed” refers to a theory for which data is manipulated in order to fit its premises.)

Gladwell has decided that problems in interpreting stressful encounters can be explained because “we do not know how to talk to strangers.” But take the case of Sandra Bland, about which he begins and ends his book. Sandra Bland, a black woman, was pulled over by a white policeman for not using her turn signal when she was in fact moving her car out of the way of the policeman! The tension escalated, with Gladwell providing a transcript made at the time of the encounter revealing exactly what happened. Gladwell concluded that the whole ordeal - so traumatic Bland ended up committing suicide three days after being incarcerated by the policeman - was a manifestation of the stranger problem.

At no time does Gladwell consider other factors that may have played an even larger role, such as endemic racism and the preconceived notions that accompany it; the legacy of that racism both in the behavior by whites in power against blacks, and the reactions by blacks to that behavior; positive reinforcement for toughness and racism from the very top of government; or even the recruiting practices of police and the type of people who (a) apply for the opportunity to wield power with a weapon and (b) are hired to do so.

[In an interview with The UK Guardian, Gladwell was asked why he didn’t mention race. He responded:

“‘The problems with framing it in terms of race is not that it is inaccurate, it absolutely is effective,’ Gladwell says, when I bring this up, ‘but the minute you raise race, you derail the conversation and it becomes possible to dismiss this whole story as a story about a racist cop. Now he may be a racist cop, but that is not the issue, the issue is that the system with the best intentions set him up in a certain way.’”]

Or maybe the issue is that he was a racist cop. Or, perhaps, something else entirely.

The case studies supplied by Gladwell support his thesis, only because we never hear about either counterfactual cases or competing theories that would be just as explanatory, if not more so. Some of the data he cites as definitive appears to be more anecdotal than representative. Even the concept of what constitutes a "stranger" morphs as needed to make his analysis work.

Gladwell's conclusion shows the same questionable relevance. He emphasizes that society cannot function without a certain level of trust. But, he asserts, we also need to abandon trust when it is appropriate. We need to exercise thoughtfulness, he urges. What is required, he suggests, is “restraint and humility.” Right - admonitions about as effective as “thoughts and prayers” after episodes of gun violence.

Evaluation: This book is darker than Gladwell’s previous works, which dealt with subjects like the love of ketchup or the talent of the Beatles. Moreover, in wanting to impress the seriousness of the subject matter on readers, he seemed a little too inclined, in my view, to include sordid details of sexual assaults that weren’t essential to proving his points. His default [to borrow one of his favorite verbs in this book] to catchphrases can be confusing rather than illuminating.

Throughout, Gladwell's reasoning was not persuasive to me; he cherry-picked stories that matched his thesis, and cherry-picked explanations for them as well.

Finally, I thought the book could have been condensed into a long magazine article without losing much in the process. show less

Dark, dark, dark. That is the best way to describe the examples that Malcolm Gladwell uses to illustrate the main themes in Talking to Strangers, which investigates the reasons for and the consequences of our failure to communicate effectively with people we don’t know well. For those familiar with the author’s past work, this book follows a similar pattern: Gladwell attempts to make the case for his “big picture” points by putting a human face on the topics through myriad case studies. Only instead of focusing on examples of successful people (as in Outliers) or how we make intuitive decisions (Blink), here we get examples of suicide, embezzlement, governmental duplicity, pedophilia, espionage against the United States, date show more rape, murder, false imprisonment, poor policing, and terrorist bombings. There is, it seems, nothing cheerful about our interactions with strangers.

So, why do we so often get things wrong when trying to understand the words and actions of other people? The author explores three reasons. First, we are genetically wired to assume that the people we interact with are being honest with us. He makes the case that this default to truth tendency is quite useful in the long run but can occasionally lead to being fooled for extended periods of time and with some spectacularly bad outcomes. Second, we tend to rely too much on our ability to “read” another person’s facial expressions or mannerisms, which Gladwell labels as transparency. That is, we think we can understand deeper truths about someone we perceive to be acting guilty or innocent, but we frequently get that wrong (particularly when alcohol is involved). Finally, we are largely ignorant of the role that coupling—the combination of an individual’s impulses with the necessary circumstances conducive to taking action—plays in understanding human behavior.

For all of its gloomy undertones, I found this book to be interesting and extremely thought-provoking. Over the years, I have seen the author accused of being too loose in making his points and relying too heavily on junk science or pop psychology, but I think that such criticisms miss the larger message. Gladwell is undoubtedly trying to convince us of his particular point of view, but more than anything he wants to call attention to and foster reasoned debate around social phenomena that he feels are “overlooked or misunderstood” (to quote from the introduction to his engaging podcast series Revisionist History). That is exactly what he has done here with a topic of clear importance to all of us. That he might have written other books which are a little more satisfying than Talking to Strangers does not change the fact that this too is a stimulating discussion on a fascinating subject. show less

I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell's books, but I just had a hard time connecting with this one. Not only was the title a little misleading with what the book was actually about, but it just didn't sound like his regular voice or style which I have really related to in the past. I especially struggled with some of the stories he chose to dive into and his responses regarding sexual assault were quite astounding.

I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt but after reading Know My Name by Chanel Miller last month, I felt quite appalled when I read his discussion about Brock Turner. While I do think alcohol can cloud judgment (and consent) it does not take away from the fact that Brock Turner CHOSE to assault Chanel Miller.

Victim show more blaming is scary and real and it is disappointing that someone of this power and influence chose to blur the lines on this one. While some of this book was interesting, this really changed my feelings about it entirely. show less

I listened to the audiobook of Talking to Strangers, and this review, unlike my other reviews, is meant only as a review of the audiobook. Why do I say that? Well, this is an audiobook unlike any other I've read.

Gladwell owns a podcasting company, Pushkin Industries, which produces a number of podcasts, including Gladwell's own called Revisionist History. At the beginning of this audiobook Gladwell says that it's his intent to meld the best of podcasting with the best of audiobooks.

So, this book has it's own theme music, which plays at the beginning of each chapter. Not totally unique - other audiobooks use music, but in this case it feels as if the music is used to set off the chapters as if they were episodes in a podcast.

Many show more audiobooks use a single narrator (which I prefer), while others use multiple narrators taking on the roles of different characters, almost like a play. But this is the first audiobook I've encountered where, as you might hear in a podcast, the author interviews people and you hear the actual interviews, as well as recreations of trial transcripts voiced by actors, and the actual audio from a police dashcam.

In short this audiobook actually listens (I think that's the right word?) like a podcast. Depending on how you feel about podcasts, that could be a good thing or a bad thing. Despite being a huge fan of podcasts myself, I am also a fan of audiobooks, so was a little leery that this approach would work.

And I'm not sure it did. I liked the experience and I'm rating it accordingly, but in my mind's ear - so to speak - I just listened to a podcast, when I was expecting an audiobook. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm an old audiobook fuddy-duddy. All I can say is that there was a clash of expectations, and I have got to say that I'd prefer my audiobooks to be audiobooks, and not podcasts.

As to the actual content of the book? Broadly speaking this book is about strangers, and how we struggle to understand strangers, and in fact actively misunderstand them to our, and their detriment. But Gladwell being Gladwell there is a lot of research to be discussed - or rabbit holes to be gone down if you're not a fan of Gladwell's - to get to a conclusion.

It's the conclusion that disappointed me. It's not the strongest conclusion he arrives at compared to his other books, and it didn't leave me with as many or quite as strong "aha" moments as his other books.

If you've read and liked any of Malcolm Gladwell's other books and somehow missed Talking to Strangers by all means pick it up - you'll likely enjoy the ride even if you end up a bit disappointed in the conclusion as I was. It may not be his best work, but it's certainly interesting and topical and done in a distinctly Gladwellian style.

If you've never read a Gladwell book you owe it to yourself to pick one up. Gladwell didn't become a five time New York Times bestselling author for nothing. He writes very clearly and engagingly and makes connections between ideas that give his readers "aha" moments. If you pick this one up, I can say that the audiobook is a good way to access this book. Just go into it expecting it to feel more like you're listening to a podcast.

Three and a Half Stars for ⭐⭐⭐🌠 Talking to Strangers show less

One of Gladwell's best! Talking to Strangers has become even more relevant in 2020, the year of COVID, where the book's central topic, how to understand strangers, and police violence are once again at the forefront of the national conversation. Gladwell even devotes an entire section to the police training programs, and their subsequent disincentives, which eventually led to the explosive clashes with the police in 2020. The casual reader might be shocked to learn that police forces across the country have been trained to target suspicious activity in high-crime areas. In other words, police are trying to catch criminals before they commit wrongdoings. This has been shown to significantly reduce crime, which is what the public wants, show more but there are risks to this approach. The casual reader might have missed the warning embedded near the end where those who set up the program cautioned against deploying these tactics too broadly because then you run the risk of souring public relations without actually reducing crime at all. It was always a fine line to walk, and as 2020 has shown it's gotten out of hand.

The section on the police and crime reduction is only a piece of the larger puzzle when it comes to strangers. A powerful and often mentioned phrase is one defined early on, called "default to truth." It's the tendency to misread people who are ill-intentioned because the majority of us aren't predisposed to behave that way, and, this is perhaps the most important part, we don't want to believe in an evil world. I'm certainly guilty of defaulting to truth. I would like to believe I can successfully read someone's character by interacting with them in person, but the evidences suggest my biases would work against me. Even more disconcerting, it might be impossible to remove the bias entirely. As with the examples of the judges handing down bail rulings, programing an algorithm to review only the criminal record and comparing that with a judge who has access to the same criminal record AND meets the offender face-to-face, the algorithm outperformed the human the majority of the time.

Bonus recommendation: Listen to the audiobook if you can. Gladwell himself is the reader and his intent was to give "Talking To Strangers" the feel of a podcast. In some cases, there are actual recordings and in other cases, where recordings don't exist, voice actors are employed which give it an oral history feel. Gladwell 100% nails it with this production. show less

This book makes me want to throw up. "Talking to Strangers" is not a book about making friends or connections with strangers. It's a book on how badly we humans fail at interpreting and understanding other human beings - strangers - and some of the awful results.

Malcolm leads with the case of Sandra Bland. Then invites us to join him in investigations with spies in the CIA, Bernie Madoff, Sadusky, Amanda Knox, and Brock Turner ... and even visits how so many people failed to correctly size up Hitler himself. It's mind-boggling and revolting how wrong people are in judging other people.

Recently my best friend told me that I needed to check out her new favorite podcast called Revisionist History hosted by Malcolm Gladwell. She opined at great length about how much she appreciated the way his mind worked and that I would most likely like the tone of the episodes. So I listened and she was right. (Again. Darn you, bestie!) But because I did like his podcast I thought I would give one of his books a shot. Hence today's review.

This is essentially a collection of essays about different times in history that miscommunication between strangers resulted in catastrophe. Examples: Sandra Bland's arrest and suicide, Chamberlain and Hitler's meet cute, and interrogation of suspected terrorists by the CIA to name just a few. His show more purpose is to explain why we fail at communication (on a large and small scale) and how we could maybe do better in the future. (I don't know that it's possible to totally nail communicating with someone who you've just met and I'm not sure if Gladwell thinks it's possible either.) One of the most interesting things that I learned from this book is that humans default to truth which basically means we're all super trusting of what other people say/do. I thought that we'd be more suspicious, paranoid, and generally misanthropic. But it's more advantageous in the long-run to default to truth because to be otherwise causes us to pull away from society and humans cannot survive or thrive on the fringes. The trick is to find the balance between trust and suspicion when interacting with others...or just hope for the best and trust everyone implicitly. Maybe read this book first and then make your choice. I don't think you'll regret it. show less