Talking to Strangers
Puzzle Number Two: How is it that meeting a stranger can sometimes make us worse at making sense of that person than not meeting them?
Malcolm Gladwell • Talking to Strangers
We have a default to truth: our operating assumption is that the people we are dealing with are honest.
Malcolm Gladwell • Talking to Strangers
Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.
Malcolm Gladwell • Talking to Strangers
The issue with spies is not that there is something brilliant about them. It is that there is something wrong with us.
Malcolm Gladwell • Talking to Strangers
The Aztec called pulque—the traditional alcoholic beverage of central Mexico—“four hundred rabbits” because of the seemingly infinite variety of behaviors it could create.
Malcolm Gladwell • Talking to Strangers
adolescent unable to make eye contact because the frontal lobe hasn’t developed.