This archive report was first published on 19 December 2019.
December 18, 2019, marked the release of Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Talking to Strangers, a thought-provoking exploration of our interactions with people we don't know.
According to Gladwell, we are constantly thrown into contact with individuals whose backgrounds, perspectives, and assumptions differ from our own, making it challenging to accurately assess their character.
One of the most striking examples of this 'stranger problem' is the meeting between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler in September 1938. Chamberlain, desperate to avoid a world war, fell under Hitler's spell, grossly underestimating his intentions.
Interestingly, others, including Winston Churchill, who knew less about Hitler and had never met him, were able to judge him correctly.
Gladwell also examines the experiences of New York judges who were tasked with deciding which defendants should be granted bail. Despite their skills, they struggled to accurately assess the character of strangers, often relying on first impressions.
One study found that an artificial intelligence system, fed with the same information as the judges, made superior assessments, with those released on bail by the AI system committing 25 percent fewer crimes while awaiting trial.
Gladwell attributes our struggles in dealing with strangers to our tendency to 'default to the truth,' assuming that people are honest until we have reason to doubt them. However, this can lead to us being deceived by those who are expert at lying, while also making us suspicious of those who are being truthful.
Ultimately, Gladwell argues that we must accept the limits of our ability to assess strangers and show humility and restraint in our interactions with them.
