Talking to Strangers: Unraveling The Complexity of Strangers

Introduction

We think we can understand people. We think that by meeting someone, shaking their hand, and looking into their eyes, we can get a grasp on who they are, how they feel, and what their motives or intentions are. We think that a little bit of personal knowledge gives us a big insight into their character—a job interview shows us if they’ll be a good employee, a first date can indicate the likelihood of compatibility. However, we are wrong. Strangers are indeed more complicated than we thought of. In Malcolm Gladwell’s new nonfiction book Talking to Strangers, he highlights a few of the things that make strangers particularly hard to understand: Truth Default Theory, Transparency, Coupling.

Misconceptions About Understanding Strangers

Gladwell starts off the first part of the book with two interesting puzzles worth thinking beforehand: when we’re talking to strangers, why can’t we tell when the stranger in front of us is lying to our face? How is it that meeting a stranger can somehow make us worse at making sense of that person than not meeting them? Some examples are that we have “CIA officers cannot make sense of their spies, judges who cannot make sense of their defendants, and prime ministers who cannot make sense of their adversaries.” (Gladwell 41) They all struggle with the first impression of the strangers, the second impression after knowing for a while, and assessing the strangers.

The Truth Default Theory

While the authorities fail to judge the book by its cover, the so-called “default-truth theory,” (Gladwell 57) or TDT, does not exempt us from a similar failure. Psychologist Tim Levine sets up a study where the students invited along with a partner are to answer the question. After a “fraudulent” script performance from the partner, the experiment is about how they then review the tapes of the conversations that take place afterward. Levine’s TDT declares that people assume others are telling the truth based on the basic social assumption. In fact, it turns out that we automatically assume people are telling the truth until we detect some kind of trigger that indicates they may not be truthful—only then do we begin to analyze their other actions.

Another issue with talking to strangers is transparency (or a lack thereof). Transparency is the idea that people’s behavior and demeanor—what they represent themselves on the “outside”—provide an authentic window into the way they feel on the “inside.” This is the second of the crucial tools we use to make sense of strangers. When we don’t know someone, or can’t communicate with them, or don’t have the time to understand them properly, we believe we can make sense of them through their behavior and demeanor. So, even the things that we think are universal appear to be entirely culture-based and not universal at all.

Understanding Strangers Effectively

The study conducted by Tim Levine catches my eyes the most and the scientific explanation for the phenomenon can be found in our textbook without difficulties. Speaking of his Truth-Default theory, the theory is largely based on the assumption—the people we interact with are telling the truth—we all have prior to the judgment. In order for society to run properly, the reliance on trusting someone else becomes monumental and this social assumption should also be a product of social learning. In other words, as the social learning theory by Albert Bandura states people learn from each other via observation, imitation, and modeling. (Schallhorn 237) It, directly and indirectly, results in that we human are so alike in terms of behavior and demeanor, not to mention the similarity of trusting someone else when judging. Also, it explains why there is no difference between authorities, like CIA officers, judges, the prime minister, and ordinary people. Though sounding easy, the likelihood of Levine’s study results is more than persuasive and evident to claim such a social effect. Looking back, humans are group-living animals long since we first built up a civilization. Our ancestors lived up by imitating and learning good behaviors through probably watching their tribal leaders; now we have the highest-end educational system and more-than-influential social media to model. All these have been evolutionary social reasons why we are inclined more towards trust than suspicion. If it was the suspicion that formed the basis of all interaction between strangers, we would never have learned to cooperate on such a vast and complex scale. Of course, before the universal social learning theory was able to operate, John Locke’s theory of behaviorism is arguably one of the most important factors for us to civilize until today. (Schallhorn 3)

Conclusion

While Gladwell concludes that, of all the mistakes people make facing different strangers, even the things that we think are universal appear to be entirely culture-based and not universal at all from the Spanish anthropologist Sergio Jarillo’s transparency study, the argument appears to be quite common in people’s lives. In other words, if you met a stranger from a disparate culture and tried to interpret his/her feelings through facial expressions, you may get a totally wrong understanding of what is actually going on. This can also explain why people who share cultures and backgrounds in common would mostly get along. For example, foreign exchange students would most likely hang out with students of their race. However, participating in more group activities like school clubs and sports as well as sharing your backgrounds and cultures would let others know more about you and avoid misunderstanding effectively. Despite the set of mistakes that we would make in front of strangers as an individual, the default to truth, and the illusion of transparency, the root cause of the problem is that we do not understand the importance of the context in which the stranger is operating. So it is safe to conclude that people should not look at the stranger and jump to conclusions but look at the stranger’s world.

Works Cited

1. Gladwell, Malcolm. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know. Allen Lane, 2019.
2. Schallhorn, Charles D. Psychology, Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination. AMSCO School Publications, Inc., 2017.