Talking to Strangers

by

Malcolm Gladwell

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:
Default to Truth Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker), Neville Chamberlain, Adolph Hitler, Emily Pronin
Page Number: 50
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker), Sandra Bland, Brian Encinia
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker)
Page Number: 166-167
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

We think liars in real life behave like liars would on Friends—telegraphing their internal states with squirming and darting eyes.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker)
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.”

Related Characters: Amanda Knox (speaker), Malcolm Gladwell
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker), Sandra Bland, Brian Encinia, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton
Page Number: 311-312
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker), Sandra Bland, Brian Encinia
Related Symbols: Sandra Bland’s Cigarette
Page Number: 330
Explanation and Analysis:

Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.

Related Characters: Malcolm Gladwell (speaker)
Page Number: 346
Explanation and Analysis:
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Talking to Strangers PDF

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
Limitations of Transparency  Theme Icon
Self vs. Stranger  Theme Icon
Gladwell ruminates on the idea of transparency, which refers to the idea that a person’s exterior appearance matches their interior reality. Strangers... (full context)
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Limitations of Transparency  Theme Icon
Self vs. Stranger  Theme Icon
3. Gladwell explores the history of transparency, beginning with ideas Charles Darwin put forth in his The Expression of the Emotions in... (full context)
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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... (full context)
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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... (full context)
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Self vs. Stranger  Theme Icon
5. If transparency varies across cultures, does it also vary within cultures? Gladwell asks the reader to imagine... (full context)
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Self vs. Stranger  Theme Icon
...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,... (full context)
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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... (full context)
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Limitations of Transparency  Theme Icon
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6. The limitations of transparency explain the second puzzle Gladwell presented in Chapter Two: why are computers better judges of... (full context)
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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... (full context)
Chapter Seven: A (Short) Explanation of the Amanda Knox Case
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Self vs. Stranger  Theme Icon
...into Kercher’s murder at the expense of Knox. To Gladwell, the Knox case is about transparency.   (full context)
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Limitations of Transparency  Theme Icon
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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,... (full context)
Chapter Eight: The Fraternity Party
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Self vs. Stranger  Theme Icon
Gladwell believes the transparency assumption adds yet another layer of complexity to sexual assault cases. He references a Washington... (full context)
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Limitations of Transparency  Theme Icon
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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... (full context)
Chapter Eleven: Case Study: The Kansas City Experiments
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Limitations of Transparency  Theme Icon
Coupling Theory and Context  Theme Icon
Self vs. Stranger  Theme Icon
...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.  (full context)
Chapter Twelve: Sandra Bland
Default to Truth Theme Icon
Limitations of Transparency  Theme Icon
Coupling Theory and Context  Theme Icon
Self vs. Stranger  Theme Icon
...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... (full context)