Talking to Strangers (Little, Brown),
Malcolm Gladwell’s sixth book, goes
on sale September 10.this book because you wanted us to stop, to
ref lect, to not move on. So how do we begin
to actually shift our judgment of others?
MG: What I’m trying to do is systematically
break down the assumptions that lead
interactions between strangers to run
amok. I meet you for the first time. We’re
two people who don’t know each other.
We start to have a conversation.
OW: And we’re making judgments based
on our own unconscious biases. Which
leads us to what you refer to as “the
assumption of transparency.” Explain that.
MG: I spent a lot of time researching that
concept. For instance, when I see you, I
observe your demeanor. Your face. Your
expressions. Your body language. And I
draw conclusions. My assumption is that
the way you represent your emotions on
your face and with your body language is
consistent with the way you’re feeling.
OW: If you smile at me, it means you’re
happy. If you frown, it means you’re
not, right?
MG: Right. But in the real world, the
outside and inside don’t always match. In
the Sandra Bland case, she was justifiably
annoyed at being stopped for no reason.
And she got nervous, but that came across
to the officer as something suspicious. He
wasn’t reading her behavior as nervousness.
OW: You write about other examples of
the presumption of transparency, too.
MG: Yes. For one, the whole Amanda Knox
case. When her roommate in Italy was
found murdered, Amanda Knox behaved
like someone who didn’t care. Her inner
feelings and her outward expression of
emotion didn’t sync up.
OW: She came under suspicion the moment
she was with other friends of the victim and
didn’t have the same reaction they did.
MG: When we deal with someone who is
mismatched in this way, we’re at risk of
getting them very badly wrong.
OW: You cite an incident involving your
father that illustrates this point.
MG: Yes. My parents were on vacation.
They were staying at a hotel, and my
father—who was 70 at the time—was in the
shower when he heard my mother scream.
He ran out of the shower, naked, and in the
room was a young man with a knife to her
throat. He tells him to get out, and the guy
leaves. My father’s face at that moment did
not betray fear, though inside he was as
scared as he’d ever been in his entire life.
OW: It didn’t show on the outside.
MG: My father’s feelings of strong emotion
never registered on his face—if you knew
my father, you’d know that.
OW: So your mother’s assailant had no
idea he was afraid. He just thought your
dad was a cool customer.
MG: Right. If you’d never met my father
and you confronted him in that moment,
you would think he wasn’t rattled at all. In
other words, you would reach exactly the
wrong conclusion about him.
OW: And that brings us to the “Friends
fallacy.” We all grew up watching sitcoms,
and we see the characters exactly ref lecting
their feelings in their facial expressions.
MG: If you turn off the sound in an episode
of Friends, you can still know precisely
what’s going on. When Monica’s angry, she
looks angry. When Ross is perplexed, that’s
how he appears. And that’s how it goes for
all of them. I had a psychologist who studies
facial expressions analyze an episode and
break it down for me.
OW: What did she observe?
MG: She’d take, say, a segment in which
Ross is really angry and look at what his
face conveyed. The answer is: the perfect
illustration of anger. The whole cast is
able to signal a complex set of feelings on
their faces alone.
OW: Because they’re actors and have
perfectly executed their lines.
MG: Yes. But in real life, we often wear
masks to protect ourselves. And masks
hide our feelings or misrepresent them to
those who don’t know us well.
OW: And then there’s something else,
what you call the “default to truth.”
MG: There’s a really interesting idea from a
researcher named Timothy Levine, who has
rethought some of the most central issues
about how human beings communicate.
The core insight is that most of us are really
bad at figuring out when someone is lying.OW: Including judges.
MG: Judges are bad at it. Cops are bad at
it, too.
OW: Why is that?
MG: Levine’s research shows that we are
conditioned by evolution to assume that
everyone’s telling the truth unless there is
overwhelming evidence to the contrary—
unless doubts rise so high, it’s impossible
to believe the person anymore. It’s one
reason Bernie Madoff was able to fool
everyone for so long, or why people kept
averting their eyes when it came to Jerry
Sandusky at Penn State.
OW: Or when you suspect your spouse is
being unfaithful. What usually happens
when a woman asks her husband “Are
you cheating?”
MG: If he offers a reasonable denial, she
will default to truth—she wants to believe
he’s not lying. That’s just how we’re built.
OW: If we weren’t, the world would be
a lot different.
MG: One reason society functions is that
that’s our baseline—we take for granted that
the person we’re talking to is being honest.
OW: Speaking of honesty, we live in a time
when it’s hard to trust that what our leaders
are saying is truthful. If you could give them
a piece of wisdom that would encourage
them to be truth tellers, what would it be?
MG: That it’s okay to be wrong.
OW: Ah.
MG: Just say: “I blew it. Let’s try to figure
out a better way.” There’s such a longing for
grace and humility and clarity in our leaders.
OW: People want to believe in their leaders.
MG: They want to believe.
OW: And because Sandra Bland is so
important to your narrative, what would
you leave us with about that tragedy?
MG: Let’s not ever forget her.
OW: No, let’s not forget her. And this
book will help with that. Reading it will
actually change not just how you see
strangers, but how you look at yourself,
the news—the world. Reading this book
changed me. Thank you, Malcolm.
MG: Thank you, Oprah.@OPRAHMAGAZINE SEPTEMBER (^2019103)