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The Second Mile
Transparency is the idea that the way people behave or appear on the outside provides reliable, accurate insight into how they feel on the inside. While much of the media we consume might suggest that people are transparent—that surprised people look surprised, happy people look happy, and guilty people act guilty—Gladwell argues that transparency is a myth. In reality, facial expressions are not universal. Additionally, we have less control over how we react to stimuli than we’d like to think we do. Gladwell believes that the transparency myth creates problems in our interactions with strangers, causing us to believe that we know more about strangers’ thoughts and motivations than we actually do.
Transparency Quotes in Talking to Strangers
The Talking to Strangers quotes below are all either spoken by Transparency or refer to Transparency. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2
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We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the stranger is easy.
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Chapter 6
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When we don’t know someone, or can’t communicate with them, or don’t have the time to understand them properly, we believe we can make sense of them through their behavior and demeanor.
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The transparency problem ends up in the same place as the default-to-truth problem. Our strategies for dealing with strangers are deeply flawed, but they are also socially necessary. We need the criminal-justice system and the hiring process and the selection of babysitters to be human. But the requirement of humanity means that we have to tolerate an enormous amount of error. That is the paradox of talking to strangers. We need to talk to them. But we’re terrible at it—and, as we’ll see in the next two chapters, we’re not always honest with one another about just how terrible at it we are.
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Chapter 7
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We think liars in real life behave like liars would on Friends—telegraphing their internal states with squirming and darting eyes.
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“There is no trace of me in the room where Meredith was murdered,” Knox says, at the end of the Amanda Knox documentary. “But you’re trying to find the answer in my eyes.…You’re looking at me. Why? These are my eyes. They’re not objective evidence.”
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Chapter 11
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There is something about the idea of coupling—of the notion that a stranger’s behavior is tightly connected to place and context—that eludes us. It leads us to misunderstand some of our greatest poets, to be indifferent to the suicidal, and to send police officers on senseless errands. So what happens when a police officer carries that fundamental misconception—and then you add to that the problems of default to truth and transparency? You get Sandra Bland.
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Chapter 12
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To Encinia’s mind, Bland’s demeanor fits the profile of a potentially dangerous criminal. She’s agitated, jumpy, irritable, confrontational, volatile. He thinks she’s hiding something. This is dangerously flawed thinking at the best of times. Human beings are not transparent. But when is this kind of thinking most dangerous? When the people we observe are mismatched: when they do not behave the way we expect them to behave.
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Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.
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Transparency Term Timeline in Talking to Strangers
The timeline below shows where the term Transparency appears in Talking to Strangers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Six: The Friends Fallacy
Gladwell ruminates on the idea of transparency, which refers to the idea that a person’s exterior appearance matches their interior reality. Strangers...
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3. Gladwell explores the history of transparency, beginning with ideas Charles Darwin put forth in his The Expression of the Emotions in...
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As another example of the weight society places on transparency, Gladwell cites an incident where a Michigan judge dismissed a Muslim woman’s case after she...
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...named Sergio Jarillo and a psychologist named Carlos Crivelli traveled to the Trobriands to study transparency’s limitations. They wanted to know if people across different cultures saw the same emotions in...
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5. If transparency varies across cultures, does it also vary within cultures? Gladwell asks the reader to imagine...
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...showed that only five percent of subjects made a surprised expression. These findings suggest that transparency is a construct we have learned from watching TV or reading books, where stereotypical expressions,...
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Believing in the myth of transparency is more compromising when dealing with strangers than with friends. When we get to know...
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6. The limitations of transparency explain the second puzzle Gladwell presented in Chapter Two: why are computers better judges of...
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While the shortcomings of transparency can lead to devastating consequences, Gladwell maintains that society can’t very well eliminate personal interactions...
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Chapter Seven: A (Short) Explanation of the Amanda Knox Case
...into Kercher’s murder at the expense of Knox. To Gladwell, the Knox case is about transparency.
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...judged correctly 80 percent of the time. Gladwell categorizes these findings as an example of “transparency in action.” We tend to think that lying people behave nervously: they avoid eye contact,...
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Chapter Eight: The Fraternity Party
Gladwell believes the transparency assumption adds yet another layer of complexity to sexual assault cases. He references a Washington...
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...a party go so wrong? Gladwell’s proposed answer has to do with a “lack of transparency,” which “makes the encounter between a man and a woman at a party a problematic...
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Chapter Eleven: Case Study: The Kansas City Experiments
...when we combine our misunderstandings about coupling with “the problems of default to truth and transparency,” we open the door for cases similar to the Sandra Bland incident to occur.
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Chapter Twelve: Sandra Bland
...found Bland’s “aggressive body language and demeanor” suspicious. Gladwell interprets this as Encinia’s “belie[f] in transparency,” of believing that people’s external appearance can reliably help us understand their inner character. In...
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