Page 39 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

Interviewer: In the current game did you find the questions difficult?
Philip: Yes, some were. I was like, “Well, what is that?”
Interviewer: If you would scale them one to ten, if one was easy and ten was difficult, where do
you think you would put them?
Philip: I would put them [at] an eight.
Interviewer: An eight. Yeah, they’re pretty tricky.
Philip is then told that he and his partner did very well on the test. The interviewer asks him why.
Philip: Teamwork.

Interviewer: Teamwork?
Philip: Yeah.
Interviewer: OK, all right. Now, I called Rachel out of the room briefly. When she was gone,
did you cheat?
Philip: I guess. No.

Philip slightly mumbles his answer. Then looks away.
Interviewer: Are you telling the truth?
Philip: Yes.
Interviewer: Okay. When I interview your partner and I ask her, what is she going to say?
At this point in the tape, there’s an uncomfortable silence, as if the student is trying to get his
story straight. “He’s obviously thinking very hard,” Levine said.
Philip: No.
Interviewer: No?
Philip: Yeah.
Interviewer: OK, all right. Well, that’s all I need from you.
Is Philip telling the truth? Levine has shown the Philip videotape to hundreds of people and
nearly every viewer correctly pegs Philip as a cheater. As the “partner” confirmed to Levine, Philip
looked inside the answer-filled envelope the minute Rachel left the room. In his exit interview, he
lied. And it’s obvious. “He has no conviction,” Levine said.
I felt the same thing. In fact, when Philip is asked, “Did you cheat?” and answers, “I guess. No,”
I couldn’t contain myself, and I cried out, “Oh, he’s terrible.” Philip was looking away. He was
nervous. He couldn’t keep a straight face. When the interviewer followed up with, “Are you telling
the truth?” Philip actually paused, as if he had to think about it first.
He was easy. But the more tapes we looked at, the harder it got. Here is a second case. Let’s call
him Lucas. He was handsome, articulate, confident.
Interviewer: I have to ask, when Rachel left the room, did any cheating occur?
Lucas: No.
Interviewer: No? You telling me the truth?
Lucas: Yes, I am.

Interviewer: When I interview your partner and I ask her the same question, what do you think
she’s going to say?
Lucas: Same thing.
“Everybody believes him,” Levine said. I believed him. Lucas was lying.
Levine and I spent the better part of a morning watching his trivia-quiz videotapes. By the end, I
was ready to throw up my hands. I had no idea what to make of anyone.
The point of Levine’s research was to try to answer one of the biggest puzzles in human
psychology: why are we so bad at detecting lies? You’d think we’d be good at it. Logic says that it