Talking to Strangers Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

Malcolm Gladwell gives us some key insights into why humans have such a hard time deciphering another person’s character. And, why we are often tricked by charming lies because of our trusting nature.

About the Author

Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has worked for The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of several books including The Outliers on The New York Times Bestseller List. He is the host of the podcast, The Revisionist History, and is the co-founder of Pushkin Industries. His books often focus on the implications of research in the social sciences and make use of the academic work in sociology, psychology, and social psychology. He was born in England and now lives in New York.

Topics

Self Development Psychology

Talking to Strangers Book Summary Preview

Key Insights

In life, we make assumptions and judgments on a regular basis.

Every time we see a person we don’t know, we immediately pass judgment on them, either consciously or subconsciously.

But, as humans, are we really that good at understanding strangers?

In “Talking Strangers”, Malcolm Gladwell gives us some key insights into why humans have such a hard time deciphering another person’s character. And, why we are often tricked by charming lies because of our trusting nature.

“The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility.”- Malcolm Gladwell

With Gladwell’s deep dig into human behavior, you will begin to understand why you should never ever judge a stranger.

We Aren’t As Intuitive As We Think

Unfortunately, we are not as good at reading strangers as we think we are. And, this is true for people who work in a career where that is their main job.

In his book, Gladwell shares an example of Solomon, a bail judge in New York. Solomon’s job is to read the files of the inmates and also examine them face-to-face.

In 2017, Solomon and his team were put to a test. They were put up against artificial intelligence software to determine just how good they were at reading the inmates.

The results showed that the inmates released by Solomon and his team were 25% more likely to commit a crime than those that the technology chose to release.

“The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly.” -Malcolm Gladwell

Humans think they can read people using visual cues and body language. But, this is rather weak evidence of a person. We believe that strangers are easy-to-read, which contradicts our ideas about the complexity of the human race.

Deception Cannot Be Spotted

As humans, we assume people are telling the truth until deception becomes incredibly obvious.

Gladwell shares an example of Tim Levine, a scientist, who conducted an experiment in which the test subjects watched tapes of students who had just participated in a trivia test.

In the videos, Levine is seen asking the students questions about the trivia test, such as “did you cheat?” and “If I ask your partner, will she tell me the same?”

The results were that some of the cheating students lied through their teeth, while others confessed to their cheating ways immediately.

As the test subjects watch the video, Levine asks them to decide which students are lying and which are not. The results were about 50/50 with the test subjects correctly identifying the lying students.

Without a clear trigger to think the person is lying such as defensiveness or avoiding eye contact, the test subjects and humans, in general, are more likely to just believe that these students are telling the truth.