Talking to Strangers ( and some not so strangers)

If you have read my previous post ( well unlikely, since nobody knows this blog exists thus far!) and wondering if there is any connection to the previous post, well NO. This is about a book I read recently, that of Malcom Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers"

Similar to some of other Gladwell's books, its an easy read filled with lots of anecdotes and incidents. Anyway the main premise of the book is that when we talk to people we dont know and see things we arent sure of, we make a lot of assumptions . And that not all of those assumptions are correct. And we default to what Gladwell calls "Truth default theory"

In Gladwell's typical anecdotal style, there are  plethora of anecdotes ranging from some Cuban double agent spies to Madoff to few much more darker incidents such as the Amanda Knox murder case among others.

Anyway one of the premises in that book is what is referred to as "Truth default theory". That by default, we human beings assume that most of what other people say is true. Even when we do suspect lies, we do a bad job of identifying it. We rely on non-verbal cues, which can sometime be woefully wrong.

( DIGRESSION 1:  I myself  ,for example am quite diffident at times, at times do a poor job of eye contact etc , dunno how much of this was assumed by other ppl as some kind of lie? Dunno!! But Gladwell mentions some of these non-verbal cues as examples of how people generally tend to evaluate the prospect of whether the other person is lying, and well, not always correctly. )

( DIGRESSION 2:  As an aside, I for one, cannot LIE to save my life. Ok may be a white lie here or there, but even there I am so bad at it, that its easily detectable by anybody who takes the minutest effort. At best, I can AVOID telling truth in cases ( where such truth is unpleasant?))

Anyway back to the book, To summarize, 

1. People assume by default that  other people are saying the truth. As a result, even in controlled scientific experiments where people have to guess if a person is saying truth or not, they do identify most of the "truth" instances correctly or atleast relatively better than pt no 2

2. People do a bad job of identifying lies. The proportion of lies identified as lies and that as truth isnt all that different. And as Gladwell's anecdotes show, even intelligence agencies such as CIA aren't immune to this!!!

3. There are cases, though rarer than pt no 2, when people misread someone saying the truth as lies

The one way, Gladwell indicates in the book, people eventually di=o figure out lies as lies , is as more and more evidence comes up. As you triangulate things together, things dont add up and therefore the probability that something is a lie goes up and thats when you actually end up identifying it.

As Gladwell correctly mentions,  the fact that we gravitate towards assuming what other people say as TRUTH as default is a positive evolutionary construct as a whole for the species. A lot of  man made  structures and systems that are built, essentially assume that humans as a whole are truthful. If we start suspecting everything, there is just no TRUST and everything from society to markets to relationships cannot survive that way.

But choosing to believe everything  "Truth" as Default and thereby swallowing lies can also lead to mishaps. And some of these things can seem so obvious in hindsight that you wonder how you missed it all along.

Though the book is mostly with reference to "STRANGERS", as to how people misread/misunderstand intentions of strangers, is it possible that this is also true with people whom you know well? Or think you know quite well? I think so.

The problem I guess is if you have a set frame of reference in your mind and couple that with the "Truth Default" syndrome.  That you end up superimposing your own way of thinking on others, and couple that with imagining that others would also be acting in good faith . All of which is not a problem and may be even good in typical times  But in the process, you may misread those rare instances when these arent true, and those few instances can be costly. 

Even in the face of more information, you anchor to your existing biases, and therefore dont give newer information the weight you should and keep gravitating to your existing default thought process. And then suddenly it hits you....

Talking to Strangers and even non-strangers is quite a difficult proposition for me ( check the previous post). Understanding strangers and even non-strangers, it seems is tougher!