Page 72 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers

down so that you can see your bottom teeth.
Monica, at the door, tries to pretend nothing is amiss. She smiles at her brother. But it’s a Pan-
Am smile, not a Duchenne smile: some 12 and the barest, least-plausible whisper of 6.
Ross chases Chandler around the kitchen table. Chandler hides behind Monica, and as Ross
approaches, he says: “Look, we’re not just messing around. I love her. OK? I’m in love with her.”
Then Monica reaches and takes Ross’s hand. “I’m so sorry that you had to find out this way. I’m
sorry. But it’s true, I love him too.”
There’s a long silence as Ross stares at the two of them, processing a storm of competing
emotions. Then he bursts into a smile, hugs them both, and repeats himself, only this time happily:
“My best friend, and my sister! I’m so happy!”
As Monica breaks the news to her brother, Fugate scores her as 1C + 2D + 12D. The 1 and 2, in
combination, are sadness: She’s raised the inner and outer parts of her eyebrows. 12D, of course, is
the emotionally incomplete Pan-Am smile.
“She kind of gives—as strange as that sounds—an indicator of sadness,” Fugate said, “but then
happiness. I think it kind of makes sense, because she’s apologizing, but then she’s showing Ross
that she’s actually okay with this.”

Ross looks at his sister for a long beat. His face scores classic sadness. Then his face subtly shifts
to 1E + 12D. He’s giving back to his sister the exact same mix of emotions she gave to him: sadness
combined with the beginnings of happiness. He’s losing his sister. But at the same time, he wants
her to know that he appreciates her joy.
Fugate’s FACS analysis tells us that the actors in Friends make sure that every emotion their
character is supposed to feel in their heart is expressed, perfectly, on their face. That’s why you can
watch the scene with the sound turned off and still follow along. The words are what make us laugh,
or what explain particular nuances of narrative. But the facial displays of the actors are what carry
the plot. The actors’ performances in Friends are transparent.
Transparency is the idea that people’s behavior and demeanor—the way they represent
themselves on the outside—provides an authentic and reliable window into the way they feel on the
inside. It is the second of the crucial tools we use to make sense of strangers. When we don’t know
someone, or can’t communicate with them, or don’t have the time to understand them properly, we
believe we can make sense of them through their behavior and demeanor.

3.

The idea of transparency has a long history. In 1872, thirteen years after first presenting his famous
treatise on evolution, Charles Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals. Smiling and frowning and wrinkling our noses in disgust, he argued, were things that
every human being did as part of evolutionary adaptation. Accurately and quickly communicating
our emotions to one another was of such crucial importance to the survival of the human species, he
argued, that the face had developed into a kind of billboard for the heart.
Darwin’s idea is deeply intuitive. Children everywhere smile when they are happy, frown when
they are sad, and giggle when they are amused, don’t they? It isn’t just people watching Friends in
their living room in Cleveland, Toronto, or Sydney who can make sense of what Ross and Rachel
are feeling; it’s everyone.
The bail hearings described in Chapter Two are likewise an exercise in transparency. The judge
does not correspond with the parties in a court case by email or call them up on the telephone.
Judges believe that it’s crucial to look at the people they are judging. A Muslim woman in Michigan
was the plaintiff in a lawsuit a few years ago, and she came to court wearing the traditional niqab, a
veil covering all but her eyes. The judge asked her to take it off. She refused. So the judge dismissed
her case. He didn’t think he could fairly adjudicate a disagreement between two parties when he
couldn’t see one of them. He told her:
One of the things that I need to do as I am listening to testimony is I need to see your face and I