Talking to Strangers

Talking to Strangers starts off with a gripping story of why we as a society need to rethink how and why we communicate with each other. But this task isn’t as easy as it may sound: we humans have a history of “defaulting to trust”, which sometimes leads us to completely misread critical situations and the intentions of various historical figures. So should we simply “default to distrust”? Most likely not: just think about how difficult it would be to organize society around this principle. Instead, through this book, Gladwell argues that we should acknowledge the limitations of “truth-defaulting behavior” yet remain optimistic of its cooperation-promoting spirit.