I read Malcolm Gladwell’s 2019 book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know. I read through the book through my professional lens. As an international school leader, annually a significant portion of the school community are “strangers”. Around 20% of the school community changes every year, including 100 new students and their families and approximately 15 new employees. Sizing up and quickly connecting to new people is a valuable skill. Gladwell’s premise of the book is that humans are not very good at it! We evolved to automatically trust people as a survival mechanism. It is easier to live one’s life not having the constant worry of strangers. I believe that most people are not out to hurt others or are not deceiving others.
This really comes into play in recruiting. Recruiters need to be open to signals or red flags of candidates. This is a change to our every day, trusting mindset. Gladwell goes through many examples of how even people trained in deception, ie spies and judges, get it wrong often. Gladwell is a genius at weaving history and news stories into a coherent narrative. He uses British politicians trying to figure out Hitler’s motives just before World War II, to the example of Amanda Knox, the American student wrongly accused of murder during her year abroad in Italy. Below is a list of my takeaways from the book.
- Amanda Knox’s facial expressions and emotional responses didn’t match the stereotypical responses we think people should exhibit with grief, guilt, remorse, etc. Studies show that it is impossible to discern the truth based on a person’s body or facial language consistently. I see this most often with teenage boys. They do not have the emotional maturity to respond to events “appropriately” or express their feelings, both physically and verbally. It made it difficult for me as a principal while I was investigating behavior issues.
- There was a fascinating chapter on university drinking culture and consensus. It is difficult to evaluate the truth between young men and women when they have been drinking and there are accusations of sexual misconduct. “Drinking puts you at the mercy of your environment. It crowds out everything except the most immediate experiences.” In other words, being inebriated clouds your perception and judgment. It also impacts your memory as alcohol inhibits the hippocampus from forming memories. Scientists now think that alcohol doesn’t lower your inhibitions but instead, impacts your brain to think in the short-term (alcoholic myopia).
- “Having a meal in your stomach when you drink reduces your peak BAC (blood alcohol content) by a third.”
- “How can we expect students to respect boundaries when no consensus exists as to what they are?” Lori Shaw, legal scholar
- The idea of “coupling” means a behavior is linked to the circumstances and conditions available. The key example was more women committed suicide in the UK when it was easy to do so by using the cooking gas in British homes. Once a cleaner gas was used by municipalities, the suicide rate dropped. The same today with guns and men in America. About 40,000 Americans commit suicide every year, half of whom do so by shooting themselves. Banning handguns would conservatively save 10,000 lives a year.
My major takeaway from the book is to force myself to question my perceptions during recruiting. Use data, references, past work history instead of totally relying on my gut instinct.
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