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

by Malcolm Gladwell

Sometimes the best conversations between strangers allow the stranger to remain a stranger.

We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the stranger is easy.

You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.

If you don’t begin in a state of trust, you can’t have meaningful social encounters.

Default to truth becomes an issue when we are forced to choose between two alternatives, one of which is likely and the other of which is impossible to imagine.

We are bad lie detectors in those situations when the person we’re judging is mismatched.

Drinking puts you at the mercy of your environment. It crowds out everything except the most immediate experiences.fn2,

Consent is something that two parties negotiate, on the assumption that each side in a negotiation is who they say they are. But how can you determine consent when, at the moment of negotiation, both parties are so far from their true selves?

it is really hard for us to accept the idea that a behavior can be so closely coupled to a place.

Plath’s protagonist wasn’t looking to kill herself. She was looking for a way to kill herself. And not just any method would do. That’s the point of coupling: behaviors are specific. She needed to find a method that fit. And on that cold February night, the method that fit for Sylvia Plath happened to be right there in her kitchen.

Don’t look at the stranger and jump to conclusions. Look at the stranger’s world.

To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative—to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception—is worse.