3/1/2021 Malcolm Gladwell interview: Will the pandemic change us?

It’s unlikely | Saturday Review | The Times

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INTERVIEW

Malcolm Gladwell interview: Will the pandemic change us?

It’s unlikely
Malcolm Gladwell tells James Marriott why the lockdown tests the theory of his latest
book

Malcolm Gladwell, the Canadian intellectual, author and journalist

M A R K H A R R I S O N F O R T H E T I M E S M AG A Z I N E

James Marriott
Saturday May 09 2020, 12.01am BST, The Times

he bestselling author and prominent Canadian intellectual Malcolm Gladwell can’t hear me. I mime helplessly at
my laptop screen. He jabs at his computer in a proficient-seeming manner and asks me to say something. “Hello,” I
say, but he furrows his brow — no luck. I pretend to jab at my own computer in a proficient-seeming manner,
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hoping this will alleviate any impression of technical incompetence. For obvious reasons, nothing

T happens. I roll my eyes at him with what I hope is the air of an expert, but temporarily frustrated IT
professional and we agree to ditch Hangouts and adjourn to Zoom.

We can hear each other on Zoom, but now Gladwell’s webcam isn’t working. Fortunately, according to the thesis of
his latest book, Talking to Strangers, this is a positive development. All Gladwell’s books have a big, sexy idea, and
the big, sexy idea behind Talking to Strangers is that when we talk to people face to face we pick up extraneous
information (about their voice, clothes, hand gestures, facial appearance and so on) that is worse than useless in
helping to form accurate judgments about them.

In the book Gladwell, 56, cites the case of Amanda Knox, who spent four years in prison for the murder of
Meredith Kercher before her conviction was overturned. The prosecution construed her handstands and
cartwheels at the police station after her arrest as suspicious. Really, Knox was just an awkward, dorky young
woman — her weird behaviour should not have been used to build a case against her.

We can navigate interactions better by trimming away at some of this “noisy data”. Orchestras hire better
musicians when candidates audition behind a screen, and rates of recidivism fall when judges grant parole on the
basis of paper reports, not face-to-face interviews. According to Gladwell’s philosophy, this may be the most
accurate, unbiased interview with Gladwell you will read.

Now that lockdown has trapped us in our houses and abolished in-person meetings, Gladwell’s theory will be
tested across the world. He has already spotted that it’s draft season in basketball and American football, the time
when teams looking for new players go to “meet them and interview them”. Now that’s impossible, he predicts
that teams will be guided by impersonal data and make better decisions. Perhaps the principles of Talking to
Strangers will help me to make better decisions as a journalist too. Gladwell’s uncooperative webcam means I am
unable to distract you with the usual meaningless observations that pad out broadsheet interviews.

Gladwell thinks lockdown proves another of the points in Talking to Strangers. One of the book’s crucial
references is the “default to truth”, a concept formulated by the American academic Timothy Levine: the idea that
our natural instinct is to trust other people, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence that a person is a
bad egg. As Gladwell points out, if human beings had evolved to be untrusting we would never have managed to
build societies together. But the “default to truth” also explains why paedophiles get away with their crimes, and
why it can take so long to catch fraudsters such as Bernie Mado .

Gladwell says: “I’ve been surprised by the level of compliance with lockdowns, but maybe I shouldn’t be. Our
fundamental nature is surfacing. We are people who are willing to believe that when our leaders have a policy that
they’re acting in our best interest and they’re telling us the truth about the dangers and all these things.”

In the longer term he’s sceptical about the notion that the pandemic will trigger any serious shifts in human
behaviour. “Fundamental changes in people’s habits require some duration. The Great Depression was ten years,
the Second World War was six years.” If serious restrictions remain in place for another year, “then we’ll have
something to talk about”.

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He is relatively optimistic about the psychological impact of the pandemic too, arguing that the prospect of a
vaccine means “we have a mechanism for returning to normal . . . It doesn’t just provide physiological, biological
protection against a virus, it provides us with psychological protection against worry, which is almost more
important. There’s a clear end point.” By contrast, an “open-ended” scenario, like a war in which the population
has no sense of light at the end of the tunnel, is much more damaging to mental health.

Gladwell is riding out the pandemic with a few friends in his house in upstate New York. I tell him that I’m
imagining a secluded community of elite philosophers and intellectuals, whiling away their free time in highbrow
debate. He pauses. “I would like to think in my imagination that all of us are philosophers and intellectuals.” If I
were one of Gladwell’s friends, I’d call this answer disappointingly evasive. I ask whether the atmosphere is
convivial. “No,” he says and then pauses again. “It’s, er . . . it’s, er . . . it’s convivial.” I’m left with the impression that
his friends may be getting on his nerves. My attempts to probe further are rejected.

We get talking about two of his fellow Canadian public intellectuals, Steven Pinker and Jordan Peterson.
Everybody who knows Gladwell describes him as competitive, and the topic of professional rivalry brings out his
mischievous side. His dispute with Pinker over the issue of whether intelligence is formed mostly by environment
(Gladwell’s position) or genetics (Pinker’s position) is well documented, but he is happy to revisit it. “I have a lot of
di erences with Pinker . . . I don’t even particularly like Pinker as a person,” he says. “We’ve had some encounters
where I just think he’s been a jerk.”

As Gladwell warms to the subject of Pinker’s personal and intellectual failings, his cerebral manner thaws and he
allows himself to break into impish laughter, which sounds exactly like this: “Heeheehee.” This playful aspect of
his character is given freer rein in his podcast, Revisionist History. Gladwell says the medium allows him to be
more “wacky” and “emotional” than writing, which seems to force him into a more measured, intellectual persona.
I agree. The show is excellent — look for the episodes on country music and rich people’s love of golf.

He is much nicer about Peterson, the psychologist famous for his campaigns against political correctness. Gladwell
met Peterson long before his rise to global celebrity, when he was still living in a “little house in Bathurst [Street] in
Toronto”. The pretext of the meeting was the research Gladwell was doing for his book David and Goliath, but he
found himself overwhelmed.

“The experience of meeting Peterson is very di erent to the experience of reading him or even watching him
online. He is so compelling in person. I mean, I was just entirely in his thrall. He is just charisma times ten and I
was dazzled.”

He doesn’t always agree with Peterson, but he thinks his critics often haven’t “read what he wrote or appreciated
the context in which he was writing. They tend to select specific controversial things he said and run with them
without really understanding where they came from.”

I tell Gladwell that if I had been interviewing him before the pandemic, we would probably have spent much more
time talking about Peterson in the context of the culture wars. Gladwell says he’s uneasy with what he perceives as
a modern “intolerance for competing views”, but adds that the idea of a “marketplace of ideas was an illusion —
the marketplace was controlled by a very small coterie of people drawn from the same narrow slice of society. The
first step to regaining the true marketplace is to dethrone the white male cabal that’s been running it.”
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However, he’s “in two minds” about that, explaining: “I’d like to see the cabal dethroned, but I’d also like some
reassurance that overthrowing the cabal is not to replace it with another cabal, but to replace it with a true
marketplace of ideas.” Well put, I think.

I have to let Gladwell go — his days are consumed by producing a new series of Revisionist History. I hope our
impersonal, socially distanced interaction has allowed me to gather accurate data about his character, although he
concedes that it “would probably have been more fun to do this in a restaurant over a drink”.

“We tend to organise our lives around the encounters that are most pleasurable for good reason,” Gladwell says.
“Living is not a utilitarian exercise. But this is a great opportunity for us to at least experiment in modes of
communication that are more accurate.”
Talking to Strangers is published in paperback by Penguin

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Comments (14)

Newest

Jerry Crowley 3 JUNE

J Interestingly this article appears as a related article under the item "Get shorty — how high will your shorts
be this summer?"
Not clear what the connection is!

TheDudeAbides 3 JUNE
T Interesting but far too short. And--especially considering the short word count--far too concerned with
people other than Gladwell and his work

Pat ONeill 3 JUNE

P This was a great piece, wonderfully set up.

Michael Banks 9 MAY

M What's interesting is that neither MG or the writer make any mention of the role of gut instinct. In person a
conscious person can pick up on someone's energy directly and feel something is wrong more easily than
over the phone. And I'm sure there are stats to demonstrate advanced 'knowing' versus lack of awareness
of self and others.

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Geoff Redman 9 MAY

G Interesting when he is dissing Pinker. Gladwell is a journalist, Pinker is a scientist. I'd take Pinker's side
any day.

Tala 9 MAY
T Such an interesting man. I attended a packed book launch of his many years ago in London. He was most
engaging. I’ve just signed up to his podcast and shall treat myself to his book.

Philip Robertson 9 MAY

P With him entirely on the nonsense of reading the body language of people you have just met. It is akin to
various unacceptable isms because judgements are made on stereotypes. Should be in the same bin as
phrenology.

Also like the worry about replacing the cabal with another one. For me the overriding failure of the Blair
government.

George Thomas 9 MAY

G Let us hope that "overthrowing the cabal is not to replace it with another cabal". Sir, 'the road to hell is
paved with good intentions'. Throughout the history of the world the dominant themes are governed by
'power, position, privilege and patronage' or the loss or imminent loss of the four 'Ps'. This is the driving
force of human nature -even the current religious wars seek to establish a better 'pecking order' for the
recently disenfranchised: sadly this is not apparent to the 'foot soldiers'. So trash history, replace the
'cabal' and trust not the intellectuals to create the new power base and the dispensation of position,
privilege and patronage. Remember 'Orwell' to paraphrase- the animals could no longer distinguish the
pigs from the humans.

George Thomas
T Tala
😒
9 MAY

arctic entity 9 MAY

A He's such an interesting guy, love him.

il babbo 9 MAY
I
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Interesting comment on charisma, which might have run a good discussion on its relationship to “default
to truth” concept. Could ones charisma be used to give the impression of “truth” when in fact the opposite
might be the case.

Richard Gillard 9 MAY il babbo

R He also raises the concept of “transparency”. The idea that a person’s demeanour reflects their
feelings. Turns out we are bad reading the latter reliably from the former. So yes, charisma can’t
be relied on for truth.

Jon Charles 9 MAY

J He didn’t answer the big question (not sure he was directly asked), “post-Covid-19, will we go back to
shaking hands?”

Alastair 8 MAY
A Malcom Gladwell, admittedly, gets it wrong much of the time. However, I thing this time, he's correct.
People want their old lives back and now appreciate all they have taken for granted. I think once this
lockdown is lifted, people will be desperate to pick up where they left o and live life instead of trying to
merely preserve it at all costs.

15

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