Book Review: Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About The People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019. 386pp. $17.58
New York Times bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell disarms our assumptions in a way that very few writers can. The power of his pen comes from his careful research and analysis of data. Gladwell’s prescription to pay attention to our assumptions about one another could not be more timely. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the social distancing already created by the overwhelming plethora of data and technologies.
Talking to Strangers is engaging prose because Gladwell reexamines popular and lesser-known case studies by focusing on assumptions the people involved have made about one another and the consequences of those assumptions. Gladwell names the modus operandi of human instinct in the moment with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, and Gladwell gently but firmly asserts, “Think again! Do again!” We ought to heed his prescription because the stakes of not doing so, for riding our assumptions to its consequence, often results, as in the case studies featured in this book, in death, deception, injustice, and international counter-espionage.
Gladwell pierces three dimensions in which we make assumptions about strangers. First, we assume the best about a person unless mounting evidence proves otherwise. Second, we default to guessing someone’s intentions based on how they appear. In other words, although we know to avoid the adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” we make decisions based on who appears in front of us. Finally, we default to judging strangers’ behavior based on place and context.
On the first assumption – that we default to the best truth about a stranger – one case study that Gladwell analyzed was the tragedy of the victims of the convicted Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky was well-respected and well-loved in the Penn State community for his years of service, so it was beyond collective cognitive dissonance on the part of Penn State officials, the community, and families connected with Penn State’s athletics that this beloved coach could have possibly been a pedophile. Or take the case of disgraced British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who misjudged Adolf Hitler’s intentions and Hitler’s bald-faced lie that he would only invade the former Czechoslovakia and no other. Six months after invading Czechoslovakia, Hitler launched an invasion against Poland.
On the second assumption – that we default to making judgments about a stranger solely based upon the stranger’s behavior when their thoughts and intentions are opaque– Gladwell analyzed how court judges have a 50-50 chance in getting right whether a defendant is really guilty and yet make judgments about bail, jail time, or release. This opacity of knowing a stranger and making judgments about them is evidenced by the case of Amanda Knox who was assumed to be guilty by Italian prosecutors based on her demeanor upon her arrest. Judging strangers based upon their behavior is further complicated when people are drunk, such as the case Brock Turner, the Stanford University student who raped Emily Doe after an encounter at a fraternity party.
On the third assumption – that we default to judging strangers’ behavior based on place and context – Gladwell looks at the suicides of poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and the police shooting of African American motorist Sandra Bland. Had Plath and Sexton attempted suicide in the same manner ten years earlier, their attempts would not have resulted in death. The newer technologies for ovens and cars emanated the fatal fumes. In the case of Bland, her presence in the neighborhood she was in on that fateful evening triggered the arresting officer to make rash assumptions about why he thought Bland was there, misjudge her actions, and, in the process, react based on what their police training dictated they should do. Rather than building rapport with Bland or probing further into the reasons for her behavior they went on their assumptions, dictated by their training, framed within the time and place. They failed to know the stranger, and the stranger within the context.
We as pastors, preachers, and teachers are in the professional work of exegeting: uncovering the meaning and applicability of sacred texts and stories and connecting them to the sub-texts of people’s lives – their hopes and fears. So much is at stake everyday in our interactions with 7 billion other human beings: from the social/physical distancing during this coronavirus to historic and systemic injustices. The call for racial justice is urgent. We, in our common humanity as a community, as a society cannot afford to pre-judge strangers – for good or for ill. Gladwell’s prescription sounds a lot like sacred Scripture: love your neighbor means getting to know your neighbor for who they are, not what we think they are or what we think they ought to be doing.
