His latest book is talking to strangers...
...what we should know about the people we don’t know
Malcolm Gladwell welcome to The Economist Asks
Thank you
So tell me first what is a stranger?
What is a stranger?
A stranger is someone, you know I suppose who...
...we have limited understanding of their...
...perspective, background, culture, tradition
Another way, maybe a more interesting way to say it is...
...a stranger is someone who we know in only one dimension
What presents itself to us
Yes
And like me you’re a journalist...
...we’ve spent our lives talking to strangers in the hope of pursuing...
...something that we hoped was truthful and enlightening
What draws you to talking to strangers?
The point of my book is simply to highlight...
...the reasons why those kinds of encounters sometimes go array
Which I think is an enormously important issue because...
...we are drawn more and more into interactions with people...
...who we don’t fully understand
Well let’s look a bit more about why this matters because...
...if it was simply about the way that we behave when we meet other people...
...and kind of social politeness that would be one thing
But you actually think that there is damage to the consequences...
...of these misunderstandings
And the story of Sandra Bland is obviously very motivating for you...
...I think it’s really one of the reasons you wanted...
...to write the book in the first place?
Yeah so Sandra Bland is one of those wave of cases of encounters between...
...police officers and African Americans that were...
...for about three years, a few years ago in America...
...these were front and centre...
...there were about a dozen of these high-profile cases
She was a young woman, young black woman...
...who was coming from a job interview in a small Texas town
Gets pulled over for a minor traffic infraction...
...by a white police officer
Their subsequent encounter was captured on video camera
—the dashboard camera...
...of the cop
And their encounter goes array, they essentially get into an argument
He eventually pulls her out of the car, arrests her...
...she’s put in jail and she commits suicide three days later
It’s one of the most, to me it was anyway...
...the most heart-wrenching and also baffling of these encounters
And when I, the more I thought about it the more I realised that...
...it was a powerful way into this general problem that had been...
...that I had been thinking about for quite some time...
...which is that there seems to be something very wrong...
...with the strategies we’re using when we approach strangers
In other words the same things that, in human interaction...
...that make perfect sense when I know you...
...clearly don’t work when I don’t know you
And that, so I set out to write a book that...
...begins and ends with the Sandra Bland story
Begins by laying out the mystery so...
...how could a completely banal encounter in the middle of the day...
...between a police officer and a woman over a...
...failure to signal changing lanes...
...I mean the most proposterously trivial of infractions, lead to tragedy?
Fundamentally when you listen to this harrowing bit of audio tape...
...of the initial encounter between the police officer and Sandra Bland...
...and you see the ways in which the police officer in particular...
...systematically misunderstands where she’s coming from
For example he does not...
...he picks up on the fact that she is emotionally distressed...
...but reads it as malicious and dangerous
And not as someone who is, you know...
...she is someone with a long history of emotional instability
He doesn’t see that, he thinks...
...oh she’s trying to hurt me right?
So there was a case where he needed to know more about her...
...before he made this decision about whether she was dangerous or not
That required curiosity on his part, it required more time...
...it required some common bond of understanding and trust...
...between the two of them
All kinds of things were required
But her, what he really needed was better insight...
...into who she was as a human being
If he’s going to make this consequential decision about whether...
...she deserves to be arrested or not, he’s gotta know more
Give us a quick menu of what your theories are as to why...
...we so persistently misunderstand people...
...and this of course goes a lot broader than the Sandra Bland case
There is a wonderful, brilliant psychologist named Tim Levine...
...who has come up with an idea which he calls “default to truth”
He was trying to answer this longstanding puzzle in psychology...
...which is why are humans, human beings, so bad at detecting lies?
And you would think that we would be good at it...
...you’d think that evolution would’ve selected those...
—rooted it out, yes
Yeah who were adept at knowing when they were being deceived
It turns out not to be true at all
What’s the evidence?
If I give you a series of video tapes...
...half of which are people telling lies...
...and half of which are people telling the truth...
...and I asked you to tell me which is which
You will get about 52%—53% of the answers correct
So I might conclude that roughly, I’m just guessing, it’s almost 50/50-ish
This is Levine’s big point...
...what you’re doing is...
...you are entering the process...
...with the assumption that people are telling the truth
And you are, so you have a default to truth
Your overwhelming inclination is to say that’s truthful
And then in a small number of cases...
...where there is an overwhelming evidence of deception...
...you’re willing to challenge that conception
So you’re basically saying true, true, true, true, true, true, true, maybe false...
...true, true, true, true, that’s what you’re doing
And he says that’s powerfully characteristic of human beings...
...because that’s why they have been able to build society, functioning societies
It doesn’t work if you are sceptical of everything people say
We couldn’t have this conversation if we were challenging each other...
...at every moment
You couldn’t build a financial system
You wouldn’t send your children to school if you didn’t default to truth right?
So it’s useful, but it also has tripwires
And what’s the difference between that and confirmation bias?
I would think that confirmation bias is a kind of subset of this general tendancy
I think what Levine is discribing is something powerfully fundamental...
...about the way human beings make sense of the world
And that confirmation bias I would think of as a specific offshoot of this...
...that has to do with the way we deal with information
I suppose the squeezing question I had as I went on through the book...
...we might come to intelligence and intended deceit in a moment
But I wanted to ask you about the Amanda Knox case
You say she spent four years in an Italian prison...
...for the crime of not behaving the way...
...we think people are supposed to behave...
...after their roommate, Meridith Kercher, is murdered
Again now see that’s where I know a little bit about that case
She was exonerated, the police work was terrible, the forensics were terrible...
...and all the rest, but nonetheless there is still a bit of an unknowability about...
...aspects of the case
So as far as you’re concerned she is sort of judged for a...
...certain way that she was behaving
But I wondered whether you were looking for that, so you found it?
This actually goes back to Tim Levine’s arguments about...
...why is it that we are so bad at...
...understanding whether someone is telling us a lie or the truth?
And he says that there are a specific category of people, communicators...
...who we have trouble with
He calls them people who are mismatched
And by mismatched he means that
If you look at a universe of...
...people who are trying to judge the truth or falsity of a statement
You will see that they always get the same ones right and the same ones wrong
So we get people right when there is a match...
...between the emotional intention of the person...
...and the way those emotions are manifested in their demeanor and their affect
And their facial expressions and all those kinds of things
So a matched person would be...
...if someone is nervous and they’re sweating visibly...
...and their knee is bouncing up and down, that’s matched
Those are, we have a stereotype in our head about what nervousness looks like...
...and here we have a nervous person matching the stereotype
So if I ask you is that person nervous?
And you say yes they are
You’re gonna get that person right
But there is a category of people who will sweat...
...profusely and bounce their knee up and down when they’re not nervous at all
Those kinds of people we have trouble with
We overwhelmingly people around the world in many different cultures...
...believe that gaze aversion, looking away, being shifty-eyed...
...is a sign of deception
When someone is lying and they shift their eyes...
...we’re all good at saying they’re lying
But there are lots of people who don’t shift their eyes and lie...
...and shift their eyes and aren’t lying
They are mismatched and we have trouble with them
Amanda Knox was a very convenient example of mismatch...
...because it’s a case we’re all familiar with
And if you read the books on Amanda Knox or watch the documentaries
They all come back to the same issue...
...which is that she seemed, she acted in a way that was weird
What they’re saying is, they’re all harping on the same point
Which is she’s mismatched, she’s classic mismatch
She’s an awkward, slightly immature teenager...
...who does not match Italian and English tabloid stereotypes...
...of how distressed roommates are supposed to behave
Let’s look at the implications of changing world of data...
...and privacy, less and less privacy and the impact of social media
That must challenge your working idea of what a stranger is at all
I mean what am I supposed to make of my X thousand Twitter followers...
...and your X many more
I mean we are now sharing so many more intimate details...
...of our lives and our thoughts with many more people
Does that change anything?
I think it makes some of these fundamental issues...
...that we have with those we don’t know, much more consequential
I mean I think that the trajectory that we are on as a world...
...is that the number of encounters that we have...
...with people who we have limited knowledge is multiplying
That’s why I sort of thought this was a pressing issue to write about
What about AI and the notion that AI can hold the solution...
...to some of our biases?
It’s something we write about a lot at The Economist actually
Using programmes to look better at applications...
...so we’re not subconsciously screening out candidates...
...who may not suit a view of what a person should look like...
...who works for an organisation
How do you feel about that?
Well I have a chapter in my book that deals with this precise issue
Which I’m talking about in the context of judges making bail decisions
So the judge has to...
...the defendant stands in front of the judge...
...the judge has to decide, do I release this person until trial...
...or do I put them in prison until trial?
Are they likely to commit another crime in the interim or not?
That is an extremely difficult decision
And when we look at how effective judges are at...
...gauging, predicting the dangerousness of a defendant...
...they’re not very good at it
And when we look at how machine learning systems and AI systems...
...and algorithms do, they tend to do better...
...actually much better than the judge right?
So there’s an instance where we have clear evidence that a...
...disembodied computer can be more accurate...
...in making a prediction about a human being than a judge can
That is a clear opportunity for improving the system but...
...we need to be artful in the way we combine these two sources of insight
You can’t throw out the...
...the right answer is not to throw out the judge...
...because that undermines the legitimacy of the system...
But at the same time the right answer is don’t close the door...
...to tools that can help the judge make a better decision...
...just because they happen to be scary or newfangled
You need to do both
We need to be thoughtful about how we can integrate...
...the wisdom of things like AI...
...with human decision-making systems...
...that can confer legitimacy on the process
We can’t end without talking about politics...
...and where what you’ve written about leaves our muddled politics...
...on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment
So I think that I’ll just ask you...
...who in public life do you think popular conception has most misunderstood?
Anyone running for public office has to conform...
...to the principles of transparency, if they expect to proceed
You cannot be Amanda Knox and run for public office right?
Because you’re asked to present yourself in very broad forums...
...to people who don’t know you in the slightest
And if you deviate from our expectation...
...of how your behaviour is supposed to proceed, you’ll be penalised
Well you’re obviously not penalised are you...
...otherwise you wouldn’t have Donald Trump in the White House...
...who in every sense did not accord with...
...what a candidate for the presidency looked like?
Oh no, to the contrary...
...I would say that there is no...
...we’re talking about slightly different things here but...
...Donald Trump’s inner states and his outer representations...
...are perfectly matched
When he is disgusted, he shows disgust
When he, I mean no man have ever done less to mask...
...his inner feelings than Donald Trump
Which is I think a powerful reason why he is so popular...
...is that that codes to many people as authenticity
Right he makes no attempt whatsoever to filter his feelings
They spill out of him at 3 o'clock in the morning on Twitter
I mean this is, so that is to my point I think that...
...politics powerfully favours those who have this...
...direct correspondence between the way they feel and the way they act
Particularly contemporary politics...
...which are so concerned with public persona and the aura of celebrity...
...and all those kinds of things
That’s interesting that almost, I’m sure you don’t mean this politically...
...it’s almost a sort of kind reading of Donald Trump
You think he’s actually, he’s made for the job?
No I mean there’s a correspondence between...
...his inner states and his representations
That’s not a value judgement that’s an observation about...
...the way he expressed his character
I happen to think that’s wholly inappropriate...
...and that in fact to be an effective leader you have to learn to...
...mask your inner feelings
Which is to my point though...
...going back to the question of who is misunderstood
It is becoming increasingly difficult for people who are mismatched...
...to operate successfully in public life
—Because the expectations culture is so strong
Yes we have come to emphasise so much personal...
...the validity and importance of personal representation...
...that we have penalised an entire group of people...
...who may be extraordinarily capable but don’t match...
...this kind of stereotypical picture of...
...how they’re supposed to present themselves emotionally
Malcolm Gladwell no longer a stranger, thank you very much