“Defaulting to truth is a problem. It lets spies and con artists roam free.”
Barely a day goes by without talking to a stranger in today’s society. It could be in a grocery store, a drive-thru or on Twitter. Most of the time, the encounters go very well. However, there are times when they don’t. Talking to Strangers looks specifically at the time when a police officer encountered Sandra Bland and their “talk” led to her arrest and subsequent suicide. What went wrong between these strangers?
I heard about Talking to Strangers on Gretchen Rubin’s Happier podcast in October 2019. I then put the book on my to-read list. I saw it available at my library this week and checked it out. When I posted about reading it, there were several other people I knew who were reading it or wanted to read it. One person also recommended his book, Blink.
When we meet strangers, we often default to assuming people are telling the truth. We have an expectation about how people will act if they’re telling the truth or lying. However, when people are mismatched, even top detectives have trouble knowing the truth. This was the case with Amanda Knox, Bernie Madoff and Adolf Hitler. They either acted like they were telling the truth when they were lying or vice versa. We also tend to not look at how a place and action can be “coupled.” Crime can be concentrated to a few streets. Suicidal acts can increase when there is an easy way to do it and decrease when that it taken away. However, when we start looking for deception everywhere and base our decisions about strangers and their truthfulness by their actions, we can get it wrong. This can lead to explain how the police officer who encountered Sandra Bland misinterpreted her actions and then reacted based on his assumptions.
Talking to Strangers doesn’t solve the problem of reading people, but it gives readers the ability to be aware of other people and more aware of oneself. We need to realize that we are all bad at knowing if someone is lying. We also need to realize that people don’t always act according to the broad assumptions we have as to how they act. We need to have caution and empathy when we talk to strangers.
Are you good at telling if people are lying? Share on the blog.