As humans, we have this notion that people generally wear their feelings on their sleeve. This is the idea that we, the observer, can infer the feelings of other people through their mannerisms, attitude and actions. If someone is smiling, we tend to believe they are enjoying themselves. If someone furrows their brow, we assume they either do not understand something, or are thinking of something to say. Of course, people are much more complex than this, and even my examples may not be 100% true to you,...

A few days ago, I wrote about Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Talking to Strangers, and the sad story about our default reaction in trying to make sense of the world and its dire consequences. Today I read a chapter on coupling and how strongly "coupled" (get it), our actions are to context or circumstances. One of the most stark examples was suicide in England in the middle of the last century. Gladwell explains that at its peak, the number of annual suicides due to gas inhalation reached around...

I have been reading Malcolm Gladwell's most recent book, Talking to Strangers. The book, like other books from Gladwell, give us an insight into realizing what we thought we fully understood, we actually may not had. In Talking to Strangers, Gladwell goes over several recent news reports and discusses how they became so. One particular such discussion is around the now-confirmed and sentenced sexual abuse perpetrated by US Gymnastics' Larry Nassar. Nassar was the organization's doctor and for a long time there had been allegations of misconduct. The...