Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell - Page 2 of 3

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell

This is the story of retired Penn State assistant coach Gerry Sandusky who was caught in the shower naked with a naked boy engaged in a sexual act. There is uncertainty about when the incident took place and how the information was shared. It also took over a decade for Sandusky to stand trial, be convicted, and sent to prison. While many people had doubts about Gerry’s behavior with kids, they defaulted to truth and gave him the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, many young boys were molested by Gerry and several administrators lost their high level jobs.
There is also a mention here of the Larry Nasser story. He was the doctor for the US women’s gymnastic team. Over the years he performed many procedures on team members that involved him penetrating their private parts as a form of therapy. This was even done at times with parents in the room and they were often his biggest defenders. I wasn’t until his computer was found to contain a large stash of child pornography that people started to take complaints made by the team members seriously. He too is now serving a long prison sentence even though it should have happened sooner were it not for parents and colleagues defaulting to truth.

The actors in “Friends” are so good that you can almost tell what is going on with the sound off. That is not the case in real life. Our strategies for dealing with strangers are deeply flawed, but they are socially necessary. We therefore have to tolerate an enormous amount of error. The extra information we get from faces isn’t useful.
People with emotional problems don’t always look like they have emotional problems. Stereotype is wrong all too often. Studies of different cultures cited here show how people from different cultures view facial appearances differently.

Amanda was a young American girl in Italy who’s roommate was savagely murdered. Amanda was convicted on flimsy evidence primarily because she was an innocent person who looked and acted guilty. Her facial expressions and body language were not those we would associate with someone sad and upset because her roommate had been murdered.
The term for this is mismatched. This is similar to the Bernie Madoff case. He was a guilty person who looked innocent. This is just the opposite of Knox but he was still mismatched. We are very bad judging people who have mismatched behaviors.

This is the story about two college students who had a lot to drink at a party and were found having sex on the ground by two passers by. At a blood alcohol level of about 0.15 most of us will black out. In these circumstances we can still function to a point, but we are not likely to remember much if anything at all. Drinking at colleges has increased and blackouts, therefore, are more common. They are more common in women due to their lower average weight and blood alcohol increases on an empty stomach.
The term here is alcohol myopia. When someone renders themselves myopic, they can do terrible things. Men should learn how to treat women and how to drink less. (Doug: Good luck protecting young people you know from self-induced alcohol myopia and it’s aftermath.)