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Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
by Malcolm Gladwell
Because Gladwell wrote it, it must be good, right? Sure, he has a solid journalistic background and has been a trailblazer with previous books, but in Talking to Strangers, I think his argument is shaky at best; and his conclusions, while logically sound, are far reaches that aim only to support the faulty premise. He uses graphic depictions of violence and sexual assault to seemingly stun the reader, in hopes that the disturbing details will add weight to his shallow theory. His most egregious conclusions deflect blame from the complicit, or excuse the behavior of abusers. It is reckless for someone with such a large platform to be this careless.
Gladwell discusses 3 reasons why humans are bad at talking to strangers: 1) default-to-truth theory, 2) transparency fallacy, and 3) lack of context. People have a tendency to believe others are telling the truth, that nonverbal cues represent a person’s true feelings and intentions, and specific details that influence the current moment are undervalued. On the surface, these are solid assertions. The trouble arises when Gladwell forces this logic onto high profile cases of espionage, murder, pedophilia, and sexual assault.
The story is bookended by the case study of Sarah Bland, an innocent woman who was pulled over and arrested for failing to signal when she maneuvered her car out of the way as police officer Brian Encinia sped up on her. On her third day in prison, she died by suicide. Gladwell thought the discourse around this event was polarizing to the point where nobody was seeing the clear picture. Talking to Strangers is his attempt to clear that up (or at least put his hat in the ring). His conclusion: “The death of Sarah Bland is what happens when we don’t know how to talk to strangers.” Gladwell asserts this incident was not about “a bad police officer and an aggrieved black woman,” but was a collective failure resulting from: training that encouraged officers to treat everyone like a suspect (that’s right – Gladwell spends half the book demonstrating how and why people default to truth, so he can tell us in the end that cops do the opposite), making bad assumptions based on nonverbal signals, and misunderstanding the situation. A neat logical bow on the argument overall, but nowhere does Gladwell acknowledge the huge power dynamics at play between police officers and a civilians. He uses “context” to excuse the implicit bias of a police officer who assumed a black person in Texas with out-of-state plates and fast food in the car was on her way to a drug deal. The power dynamics alone ought to put this encounter into a different category that is not meekly equated to a casual encounter between strangers.
In fact, power dynamics do not come into play anywhere in this book; not in regards to police aggression, abuse, institutional and organizational hierarchy, or world politics. And yet only two of the discussed cases involve “strangers” of a level status (the rape of Chanel Miller, and the false murder conviction of Amanda Knox).
The default-to-truth argument is that people implicitly believe others because society would not function if everyone acted dubiously. We must default to truth for the sake and survival of the human race. In the benign cases, Gladwell shows the reader that double-agents and megalomaniacs can be deceptive (shocking). So this is why Fidel Castro was able to plant a network of spies in the CIA, and why Neville Chamberlain was duped by Hitler. In the egregious cases, Gladwell leads you to believe that coaches and university leaders at Penn State who were complicit in Sandusky’s pedophilia deserve our sympathy, as do the parents who believed Larry Nasser more than their young gymnast daughters. With the Nasser case in particular, it would have been a good time for Gladwell to at least distinguish between “default to truth” and “default to authority,” because it seemed most people involved chose the latter.
The case for the transparency fallacy begins with an unnecessary description of a scene in Friends to show the reader that actors do indeed use facial expressions to convey emotion on-screen, while in reality nonverbal language more often does not reflect a person’s inner desire. This fact, of course, excuses the “misinterpreted signals” Brock Turner received on the night he attempted to rape Chanel Miller, especially since they were both inebriated. There is far too much discussion prefacing this conclusion in regards to how alcohol affects people, even though Gladwell does state in one sentence that alcohol should never be a reason to blame the victim or excuse perpetrators of sexual assault (that’s good, at least); but he sure wants you to know that alcohol severely impacts decision making.
In the section about context, Gladwell lays out the most convincing arguments. He cites the British coal gas study to claim that suicide is a “coupled event,” meaning that it requires both the desire and the means to do it. Sylvia Plath, like many others, used the coal gas oven in her apartment. The study showed that when these ovens were replaced, the suicide rate decreased drastically. Gladwell goes so far as to say that “handguns are the American’s coal gas.” The other interesting bit in this section was about the concentration of crime in cities, and that law enforcement would be well-served not to expand, but to focus. In the broader scope of the book, these conclusions are thinned out when Gladwell expands them to Sarah Bland’s own suicide and asserts that Encinia was “in the wrong place” because he was not patrolling a high-crime area.
Bonus star for the well-produced audiobook. Gladwell’s foray into podcasting was transferred into an audio experience complete with a theme song, personal interviews and testimony, and a voice cast to enact unrecorded court proceedings. Unfortunately, the content was utterly disappointing and undeserving of this high-quality production.
Gladwell discusses 3 reasons why humans are bad at talking to strangers: 1) default-to-truth theory, 2) transparency fallacy, and 3) lack of context. People have a tendency to believe others are telling the truth, that nonverbal cues represent a person’s true feelings and intentions, and specific details that influence the current moment are undervalued. On the surface, these are solid assertions. The trouble arises when Gladwell forces this logic onto high profile cases of espionage, murder, pedophilia, and sexual assault.
The story is bookended by the case study of Sarah Bland, an innocent woman who was pulled over and arrested for failing to signal when she maneuvered her car out of the way as police officer Brian Encinia sped up on her. On her third day in prison, she died by suicide. Gladwell thought the discourse around this event was polarizing to the point where nobody was seeing the clear picture. Talking to Strangers is his attempt to clear that up (or at least put his hat in the ring). His conclusion: “The death of Sarah Bland is what happens when we don’t know how to talk to strangers.” Gladwell asserts this incident was not about “a bad police officer and an aggrieved black woman,” but was a collective failure resulting from: training that encouraged officers to treat everyone like a suspect (that’s right – Gladwell spends half the book demonstrating how and why people default to truth, so he can tell us in the end that cops do the opposite), making bad assumptions based on nonverbal signals, and misunderstanding the situation. A neat logical bow on the argument overall, but nowhere does Gladwell acknowledge the huge power dynamics at play between police officers and a civilians. He uses “context” to excuse the implicit bias of a police officer who assumed a black person in Texas with out-of-state plates and fast food in the car was on her way to a drug deal. The power dynamics alone ought to put this encounter into a different category that is not meekly equated to a casual encounter between strangers.
In fact, power dynamics do not come into play anywhere in this book; not in regards to police aggression, abuse, institutional and organizational hierarchy, or world politics. And yet only two of the discussed cases involve “strangers” of a level status (the rape of Chanel Miller, and the false murder conviction of Amanda Knox).
The default-to-truth argument is that people implicitly believe others because society would not function if everyone acted dubiously. We must default to truth for the sake and survival of the human race. In the benign cases, Gladwell shows the reader that double-agents and megalomaniacs can be deceptive (shocking). So this is why Fidel Castro was able to plant a network of spies in the CIA, and why Neville Chamberlain was duped by Hitler. In the egregious cases, Gladwell leads you to believe that coaches and university leaders at Penn State who were complicit in Sandusky’s pedophilia deserve our sympathy, as do the parents who believed Larry Nasser more than their young gymnast daughters. With the Nasser case in particular, it would have been a good time for Gladwell to at least distinguish between “default to truth” and “default to authority,” because it seemed most people involved chose the latter.
The case for the transparency fallacy begins with an unnecessary description of a scene in Friends to show the reader that actors do indeed use facial expressions to convey emotion on-screen, while in reality nonverbal language more often does not reflect a person’s inner desire. This fact, of course, excuses the “misinterpreted signals” Brock Turner received on the night he attempted to rape Chanel Miller, especially since they were both inebriated. There is far too much discussion prefacing this conclusion in regards to how alcohol affects people, even though Gladwell does state in one sentence that alcohol should never be a reason to blame the victim or excuse perpetrators of sexual assault (that’s good, at least); but he sure wants you to know that alcohol severely impacts decision making.
In the section about context, Gladwell lays out the most convincing arguments. He cites the British coal gas study to claim that suicide is a “coupled event,” meaning that it requires both the desire and the means to do it. Sylvia Plath, like many others, used the coal gas oven in her apartment. The study showed that when these ovens were replaced, the suicide rate decreased drastically. Gladwell goes so far as to say that “handguns are the American’s coal gas.” The other interesting bit in this section was about the concentration of crime in cities, and that law enforcement would be well-served not to expand, but to focus. In the broader scope of the book, these conclusions are thinned out when Gladwell expands them to Sarah Bland’s own suicide and asserts that Encinia was “in the wrong place” because he was not patrolling a high-crime area.
Bonus star for the well-produced audiobook. Gladwell’s foray into podcasting was transferred into an audio experience complete with a theme song, personal interviews and testimony, and a voice cast to enact unrecorded court proceedings. Unfortunately, the content was utterly disappointing and undeserving of this high-quality production.