Talking to Strangers
Talking to Strangers
In Malcom Gladwell’s “Talking to Strangers,” the author states that humans are worse than they think when it comes to reading or understanding strangers. He discusses the Truth Default Theory, which states that humans are worse at identifying lies than they are at identifying truths. He exemplifies this truth by explaining the story of Anna Montes, a double agent for Cuba who worked as a high ranking American intelligence officer. According to Gladwell, Anna Montes was able to deceive the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) for years because our minds have become predisposed to this truth default theory.
According to the Truth Default Theory, humans are bad at detecting lies because we naturally have a “default to truth,” or “operate on the assumption that people we are dealing with are honest.” In order for us to switch to mode that engages more critical thinking, a “trigger” or doubt must occur. Unless something comes up that contradicts our belief in our initial assumptions, we do not see a need to assess the truth or falsity of something.
Even the DIA, a government entity dedicated to collecting information on others was deceived by a double agent (Anna Montes) for years because they failed to turn off their predisposition in believing others when questioning their own operatives. Montes, who served as a double agent during her entire 10 year at the DIA, first piqued the interest of counterintelligence Reg Brown when she arranged a meeting date with a member of the Cuban Ministry of Defense who gave a thinly veiled warning that Cuba was considering shooting US aircraft on Cuban ground. The DIA decided to ignore this warning and the very next day, Fidel Castro ordered two fighter jets to shoot two planes out of the sky. When a public interview with CNN disclosed the fact that the DIA was given an unofficial warning the day prior to the attack, the competence of the DIA was questioned and Fidel Castro had managed to embarrass the US government. When Reg Brown looked into the details of what happened after the shootings, he found out that Anna Montes had not only arranged the meeting date but also left the Pentagon after receiving a phone call the day CNN aired the segment. This kind of act was so counter to the culture at the DIA (where people left after they were dismissed when they were called into the Pentagon) that Brown's suspicions compelled him to further investigate.
When Brown finally persuaded someone to investigate her, Montes stated she had never received a phone call and left because she was hungry and the cafeteria was closed. Although the denial of receiving a phone call clearly contradicted key witness accounts stating otherwise, the investigator at the time chose to believe her because he ultimately could not wrap his head around the fact that such a high ranking intelligence officer would lie. In doing so, the investigator was acting on the premise of the Truth Default Theory, which states that most people operate on the assumption that people are telling the truth. Instead, he chose to rationalize her odd behavior based on the fact that she left the Pentagon early because she had food allergies that disallowed her from using the vending machine. In regards to the phone call, he chose to believe her by rationalizing that the day after the attack had been a “crazy hectic day” and that the people who had seen Montes take a phone call were “too stressed” to accurately remember such a minute detail. The investigator ultimately chose to rationalize Montes’ lie due to the fact that he did not have a strong enough “trigger” to snap out of his bias towards believing in the words of a colleague.
The threshold for the trigger was finally broken when the NSA, a group of code breakers decrypted a line stating “safe,” which was the name of the DIA’s internal computer messaging system. This pointed to the fact that a spy was directly working for the DIA. The code also mentioned that the person in question had visited Guantanamo Bay from July 4th to July 18th. A quick computer search came up with Anna Montes along with a few other names. It was at this point that the investigator realized that Montes was the double agent in question. Despite the fact that there was more than enough data on Anna Montes to start an investigation earlier based on some of her contradictory or ambiguous claims, the investigator chose to default to his truth threshold until undeniable evidence (or a trigger) came forward.
However, Gladwell does note that defaulting to truth has an evolutionary advantage in that it would be hard to scrutinize the actions of those around us constantly. We do this because it's more time efficient and allows us to be more socially cooperative with each other. In fact, it has been found that most people generally do tell the truth and that only a small sector of society lies on a large scale. If we were to alternatively be hardwired with no truth thresholds, we would be constantly paranoid and suspicious of one another. Society and the concept of business and community would cease to exist. Because of this, Gladwell purports that the few of those who are born with low truth thresholds are more likely to be outcasts and less socially adept than others in modern day society.
However, the few people who are inclined to disbelieve in others are valuable to society from time to time because they are adept at catching frauds and cons. These people are called whistleblowers in modern-day society. Names that come to mind include Edward Snowden and Harry Markopolos (the man responsible for exposing Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme). Although Gladwell recognizes the Truth Default Theory makes us more susceptible to deception, he ultimately argues that on a larger scale society is better off defaulting to truth because society would be unable to operate if everyone were to be distrustful of one another.
