Notes on Talking to Strangers

I definitely enjoy reading Malcom Gladwell’s books. It’s interesting to explore and make sense of human interactions and psychology. I first stumbled across his books last year in the library. The first one I read was David and Goliath. Subsequently I read Blink and The Tipping Point. I made notes on the first two books for each chapter, but due to some reasons I did not jot down anything for the last.

It’s worth mentioning because of Blink I started to reevaluate my love relationship, to a certain extent it precipitated the break up which was proved detrimental to me.

I was surprised to see his latest book while browsing at a bookstore and I bought it without hesitation. Here I’m going to summarise what I have learnt from the book.

First of all we all would agree it’s hard to make sense of strangers because we do not know about them. While in Blink, Gladwell talked about thinslicing which to me it’s like your innate hunch towards anything. I guess that’s how I interact with strangers too. And we always talk about how important it is to give a good first impression. We look at their body language and make inference out of it.

The three major points are default to truth theory, transparency and coupling. As human, we tend to believe whoever we are dealing with is honest. This is the crucial trust that we need to maintain an effective society. For myself, I rarely counter check the change I get after a payment. I assume it is the correct amount. I don’t always doubt what people say. Even though sometimes question raised against a person, we tend to trust the person until the point of which we couldn’t do it anymore.

Secondly, we believe people around us are transparent. As in, people show emotions outwardly according to what they feel inside. I guess this is what learnt since young. When people are lying they will avoid eye contact, fidgeting and restless. I would say in our culture most of them is true, but not all. There are people who are shy and have been avoiding eye contact all the time. Those are mismatched situations which will impair our judgement towards the stranger. Also, emotions are not universal. An example given in the book is a Middle Eastern terrorist showed no remorse because he was defiant instead of crying and repenting. It could just because of his cultural background, man shall not show signs of weakness in all circumstance.

Thirdly, behaviours are coupled to context. Suicide is coupled to the method used. Contrary to what we believe, those who have suicidal intention will not go all the way out to die. They have a preferred method. If the means to that method are removed, they are less likely to commit suicide. For example, if someone wants to suicide by jumping of a bridge, installing a safety net will deter the person from committing suicide. Our ‘common sense’ will tell us the person will find another bridge or try jumping of a building. But studies have shown this is not the case.

Well, am I better in talking to stranger after reading this book? I guess my take home message is: not judge a stranger quickly. It’s good to know the stranger a bit more. However, my hunch has been pretty right towards strangers. Maybe I will still go along with it.