Lost in translation

If being too trusting around strangers can get us into trouble, being too suspicious can be worse. So suggests Malcolm Gladwell in his intriguing 2019 book Talking to Strangers.

Gladwell uses the example of an episode of Friends in which, even if you turned the sound off or didn't understand English, you could understand exactly what is going on. That is because actors know how to portray guilt, suspicion, compassion, deceitfulness and so forth. The trouble is, in real life people don't always act the way we think they should act. Looks can be, and often are, deceiving. Even experienced judges, police officers and spy masters can't tell when someone is lying, for example, and Gladwell gives examples of each.

Most of us "default to truth," in the author's phrase, and this, he says, is actually a good thing. Society couldn't function very well without it. We need to trust each other, even if some people will take advantage of us.

Gladwell begins and ends his book with the case of Sandra Bland, a young black woman stopped in Texas for a minor traffic violation. She ended up in jail, where she committed suicide. The officer chose to view her suspiciously because, in his eyes, she was acting suspiciously. In truth, she was just a woman already under stress put under more stress by an officer making a lot out of very little. What should have concluded with a warning and a "have a nice day" led instead to an arrest and the death of an innocent woman.

The book might have been strengthened by more Sandra Bland-like examples and fewer examples of "default to truth" leading to trouble. If you fail to read the entire book, you could easily get the wrong idea about what the author is trying to say. As with strangers, you don't want to make snap judgments with Gladwell.