Prologue: Strangers in a Cab

P.1. The sociologist Richard Sennett has praised the idea of friction in life. Richard Sennett, Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City. 2018.

P.2. When I was interviewing the actor Alan Alda about his work teaching communication skills to scientists… Joe Keohane, “Famed Actor Alan Alda on the Secrets to Better Communication,” Entrepreneur magazine. 2017.

P.3. Elon Musk describing the subway as “a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer…” Aarian Marshall, Wired.com, 2017.

P.4. “Welcome to Harris County, Georgia. Our citizens have concealed weapons. If you kill someone, we might kill you back. We have ONE jail and 356 cemeteries. “ Caleb Parke, “Georgia sheriff's concealed-carry sign goes viral,” FoxNews.com, 2018

P.5. In 2016, Pew found that “Partisans’ views of the opposing party are now more negative than at any point in nearly a quarter of a century… “Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016,” Pew Research Center, 2016.

P.6. Three years later, Pew reported, “the level of division and animosity . . . has only deepened”… “Partisan Antipathy: More Intense, More Personal,” Pew Research Center, 2019.

P.7. Friendships across the aisle are increasingly rare. Philip Bump, “Only about 1 in 10 Americans have a lot of friends of the opposing political party,” Washington Post, 2017

P.8. Studies have found epidemic levels of loneliness… One good example: Claire Pomeroy, “Loneliness Is Harmful to Our Nation's Health,” Scientific American, 2019.

 P.9. “Familiar places, close to us in our daily existence, may no longer feel entirely ‘ours…’” Chris Rumford, The Globalization of Strangeness, 2013.

P.10. “We have radically changed our environment,” wrote the late neuroscientist John Cacioppo. John Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, 2008.

P.11. “When a stranger is no longer imaginary, but real and present, sharing a human social life, you may like or dislike him, you may agree or disagree; but if it is what you both want, you can make sense of each other in the end.” Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, 2006.

Chapter 1. Strangers in a Classroom

1.1. A recent study by the British Red Cross found that a quarter of the British population feels lonely often or always. British Red Cross.

1.2 In 2018, the U.K. appointed its first “loneliness minister,” a high-ranking government official who steers policy geared toward repairing frayed social ties and reinforcing social cohesion. “U.K. Appoints a Minister for Loneliness,” The New York Times, January 17, 2018.

 1.3. A grassroots “Chatty Café” initiative, in which pubs and cafes set up specially marked tables in which strangers can chat, has spread to more than 900 locations throughout the U.K., and in several other nations. The Chatty Cafe Scheme

 1.4. In 2019 the BBC ran a series called Crossing Divides, that sought to inspire people to connect over social, cultural, or ideological differences. BBC.com

 1.5. Part of it involved encouraging encouraged people to interact more on mass transit. Emily Kasriel, “Crossing Divides On The Move: Conversational Commutes,” BBC.com, June 12, 2019

 1.6. (footnote) Coldness is such a part of the local character that when a Hungarian immigrant to Britain named George Mikes wrote a series of guides from the 1940s to the 1970s instructing others on how to be British, his advice on talking to strangers on mass transit included this story. George Mikes, How to Be a Brit, 1984 edition

1.7. “It's the best bus I've been on,” one woman told the BBC, confessing that she usually suffers from acute social anxiety. Tom Burridge, “Crossing Divides: Can a ‘chatty bus’ combat loneliness?” BBC.com, June 14, 2019.

1.8 (footnote). 23 percent of young Brits say they miss chatting with strangers. “Boozing with workmates and chats with strangers among activities Brits miss most in lockdown,” The Sun, 2020

1.9. In 2020, for instance, she developed a program with the University College London [Correction>>>this was with BPP University, not UCL; I regret the error — JK] to help college students get better at connecting with one another. “How to small talk: University law school becomes first to offer module in chitchat and networking.” Jemma Carr, The Daily Mail, 2020.

Chapter 2. A Readily Available Source of Happiness That We Almost Never Take Advantage Of

2.1. So Sandstrom and her PhD supervisor at the University of British Columbia, Elizabeth Dunn … asked a group of adults to try to chat with the barista at their local Starbucks when they got their morning coffee. Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn. “Is Efficiency Overrated?: Minimal Social Interactions Lead to Belonging and Positive Affect.” Social Psychological and Personality Science. 2013

2.2. A substantial body of research over the years has found that the single best predictor of happiness and well-being is the quality of a person’s social relationships. See: Roy Baumeister, Mark Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation.” Psychological Bulletin. 1995.

2.3. Sandstrom and Dunn gave red and black clickers to 58 first year college students…and instructed them to click red when they encountered a “strong tie…and click black when they encountered a “weak tie.” Gillian Sandstrom, Elizabeth Dunn, “Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2014.

2.4. Epley and Schroeder wondered why an ultrasocial species like homo sapiens is so often hesitant to talk to strangers, and they wanted to see what happened when they did. Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, “Mistakenly Seeking Solitude,” Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2014.

2.5. Finally, lest anyone think that these results were skewed due to the general friendliness of Midwesterners, Epley and Schroeder recreated the experiment in London in 2019… Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, “The surprising benefits of talking to strangers.” BBC.com. June 12, 2019

2.6. There is a psychological concept underlying this phenomenon. It’s “the lesser minds problem. Nicholas Epley and Adam Waytz, "Mind perception,” In The Handbook of Social Psychology, S.T. Fiske, D.T. Gilbert and G. Lindzey (eds.). 2010

2.7. That means we chronically underestimate strangers’ intelligence, their willpower, and their ability to feel emotions like pride, embarrassment, and shame. Nicholas Epley, Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. 2014.

 2.8. “We began to speak the same language …so that each could begin to live down in the other’s mind … ‘the defective quality of being a stranger.’“ Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership: In Turbulent Times. 2018.

2.9 One study, conducted by Carleton University psychologist Michael Wohl, found that apologies from a fictitious group of Afghani soldiers for a friendly fire incident fell flat... Michael Wohl et al. “Why group apologies succeed and fail: Intergroup forgiveness and the role of primary and secondary emotions.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2012.

 2.10. (footnote) “Don’t you think that the natives are just like human beings?” she asked. “And have you noticed that they really appreciate kindness?” Hortense Powdermaker, Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist. 1966.

2.11. Sandstrom and a colleague found that people who are higher in shyness and social anxiety have more fears of talking to strangers, and the found that there was scant difference between men and women when it comes to those fears. Gillian Sandstrom and Erica Boothby, “Why do people avoid talking to strangers? A mini meta-analysis of predicted fears and actual experiences talking to a stranger.” Self and Identity. 2020.

2.12. In 2018, she worked as part of team of researchers on a study led by psychologist Erica Boothby to investigate another factor that keeps people from talking to strangers… Erica Boothby, et al. “The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?” Psychological Science. 2018.

2.13. (footnote) The psychologist Oscar Ybarra has actually found across two separate studies that talking to strangers can lead to gains in cognitive functioning. Oscar Ybarra, et al. “Mental Exercising Through Simple Socializing: Social Interaction Promotes General Cognitive Functioning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2008. See also: Ybarra, et al., “Friends (and Sometimes Enemies) With Cognitive Benefits: What Types of Social Interactions Boost Executive Functioning?” Social Psychological and Personality Science. 2011.

2.14. Sandstrom had come up against the social norm against talking to strangers in an experiment she did in conjunction with the Tate Modern museum in London in 2013. Gillian Sandstrom, “The Art of connection: Chatting with an art gallery volunteer increases happiness.” Unpublished paper.

2.15. Using an app called GooseChase, she created a scavenger hunt in 2019 that gave 92 members of the general public a list of types of people with whom to strike up conversations…After Covid-19 hit, Sandstrom tried one more experiment to see if talking to strangers could serve as a treatment for loneliness. Gillian Sandstrom, “Talking to strangers: A week-long intervention reduces barriers to social connection.” Unpublished paper.

Chapter 3. Hello Through the Howdy Door

3.1. Duke University researchers Brian Hare and Jingzhi Tan, working at the Yola Ya Bonobo reserve in Congo, launched a series of experiments to see how far this tendency could go. Jingzhi Tan and Brian Hare, “Bonobos Share with Strangers.” PLoS ONE. 2013.

 3.2. As Tan put it later, “You meet a stranger, and this individual could become your future friend or ally…You want to be nice to someone who's going to be important for you.” “Bonobos Help Strangers Without Being Asked: Humans aren’t the only species eager to make a good first impression.” Duke University. 2017

3.3. According to the Harvard University primatologist Richard Wrangham, the initial split likely occurred during the Pleistocene ice age. Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution. 2019

 3.4. No male bonobo has ever been seen killing an infant, unlike chimps, and no bonobo in captivity has ever been seen killing another bonobo. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity. 2020.

3.5. “A new bonobo, even as an infant, can be introduced without incident,” writes Brian Hare. “And two groups, including multiple adult males separated for weeks, months or years, can be reintegrated with little more than play and sexual contact as a result.” Brian Hare, et al., “The self-domestication hypothesis: evolution of bonobo psychology is due to selection against aggression,” Animal Behaviour. 2012. [Note: this paper, and the book by Hare and Woods, are my primary sources for the material on bonobos and self-domestication in this chapter.]

3.6. In 1978, the legendary primatologist Jane Goodall watched aghast as one group of chimps at the Gombe reserve in Tanzania set about systematically exterminating another group for no clear reason… “Chimp Killings: Is It the 'Man' in Them?” Science News. April 29, 1978.

 3.7. “Chimps are brawny bodybuilders, whereas [bonobos] look almost intellectual…” Frans De Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates. 2013.

Chapter 4. Human Makes a Friend

4.1. This was not an unusual sight in New York City—a place where a baby is born every 4.4 minutes… New York City Department of City Planning.

 4.2. Only a quarter of the city’s nearly 500 subway stations are equipped with elevators. Jugan Patel, “Where the Subway Limits New Yorkers With Disabilities.” New York Times, February 11, 2019.

4.3. The mother could have been attacked, the baby possibly eaten… JT Feldblum et al. “Sexually Coercive Male Chimpanzees Sire More Offspring,” Current Biology. 2014

4.4. The 18th century thinker Adam Smith wrote about humans’ seemingly innate desire to be “praiseworthy.” Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 1751.

4.5. Why does anyone ever help a stranger? Evolutionary scientists and philosophers have grappling with this phenomenon for many years. They call it the “altruism paradox.” There is a great deal of work on this, but a great entry point, if you’re interested in learning more, is Christopher Boehm’s Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame, from 2012.

4.6. “Other domesticated animals were first brought to that state of perfection through him. He is the only one who brought himself to perfection.” Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, “Wild Men,” 1795, found in Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Vice and Violence in Human Evolution.

4.7. At some point, perhaps 2 million years ago, perhaps more, humans began scavenging large carcasses. Later, they began hunting. Michael Tomasello, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny. 2019.

4.8. “At just 1.5m and 50kg in weight at most, and no more than a few lumps of stone to throw, they were not particularly well equipped for hand-to-hyena combat. So group living seems a necessity for h. Hablis.” Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science. 1996

 4.9. By 1.5 million years ago, the bigger, smarter, longer-legged homo Erectus­, with a bigger brain and stronger body, began to travel. Timothy Earle, et al, “Migration,” in Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present. Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail (eds). 2012

 4.10. With long legs and meat in their diet, the nomadic homo Erectus had an advantage over more stubby-legged and finicky creatures. Rick Potts, Humanity’s Descent: The Consequences of Ecological Instability. 1996

4.11. (footnote) A recent find in Kenya suggests that some people were already hunting with stone tools by then. Ann Gibbons, “Lucy's Toolkit? Old Bones May Show Earliest Evidence of Tool Use,” Science, 2010. Another recent find—a set of tools discovered in 2011 on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, dates back 3.3 million years. Michael Balter, “World’s oldest stone tools discovered in Kenya,” Science. 2015.

4.12. “They had no or few satisfactory fallback options if the collaboration failed,” writes Duke University developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello, who has studied apes and human evolution extensively. “They had to collaborate with others on a daily basis or else starve.” Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, Harvard University Press. 2016.

4.13. The anthropologist Kim Hill, who did extensive field work on the Ache people in the forests of Eastern Paraguay. Kim Hill, “Altruistic Cooperation During Foraging By the Ache, And the Evolved Human Predisposition to Cooperate.” Human Nature. 2002

4.14. Early humans developed a capacity for something far more flexible, fruitful, and, as time would show, powerful: indirect reciprocity. Coren Apicella., et al. “Social networks and cooperation in hunter-gatherers.” Nature. 2012.

 4.15. Join intentionality…Self-other equivalence. Michael Tomasello. A Natural History of Human Morality. 2016

 4.16. Theory of mind. Kim Hill, et al. “The Emergence of Human Uniqueness: Characters Underlying Behavioral Modernity.” Evolutionary Anthropology. 2009

 4.17. Depending on the seriousness of the transgression, these sanctions could arrive in the form of criticism, gossip, ridicule, shaming, ostracism, even execution, all dished out by one’s peers. Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest. 1999

 4.18. [footnote] “Leaving matters to the forest.” Colin Turnbull, The Forest People. 1961.

 4.19. Humans produce a hormone known as oxytocin. A good review of this research is in: Carsten De Dreu and Mariska Kret’s  “Oxytocin Conditions Intergroup Relations Through Upregulated In-Group Empathy, Cooperation, Conformity, and Defense.” Biological Psychiatry. 2015 

 4.20. “It has been mixtures all the way down. Mixture is fundamental to who we are, and we need to embrace it.” David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. 2018

4.21. This is how male chimpanzees expand their holdings, using a tactic primatologists call “male coalitionary violence.” Richard Wrangham, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. 1996.

4.22. According to the anthropologist Raymond Kelly, technological innovation may have set us on a less warlike path. Raymond Kelly, “The Evolution of Lethal Intergroup Violence.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2005.

4.23. [Footnote] It’s worth noting that Kelly was in no way insulated from the darker side of human nature. When he was in the field, studying the Toro tribe in Papua New Guinea, someone in the tribe kept burning his hut down. “Profile of Raymond C. Kelly,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2005.

4.24. “We now realize, that migration across great distances is one of the fundamental processes of human history,” write archeologist Clive Gamble and anthropologist Timothy Earle. “We seem to be made for travel; we evolved in transit.” Timothy Earle, et al, “Migration,” in the book Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail (eds). 2012

4.25. We shed our heavy brows; our faces became shorter and more feminized; our canine teeth got shorter, and our cranial capacity shrunk slightly…Brian Hare. “Survival of the Friendliest: Homo sapiens Evolved via Selection for Prosociality.” Annual Review of Psychology. 2017.

 4.26. The British anthropologist Robin Dunbar found that as primate group size increases, so does the amount of time apes spend grooming one another. Robin Dunbar, “Functional Significance of Social Grooming in Primates.” Folia Primatologica. January, 1991.

4.27. A more efficient form of conveying social information was needed. Dunbar believed that for humans, this was language. Dunbar, “Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 1993

 4.28. A statistical analysis of 32 contemporary hunter-gatherer societies conducted in 2011 found that on average, only about a quarter of members of each band were genetically related… Kim Hill, et al, “Co-residence Patterns in Hunter-Gatherer Societies Show Unique Human Social Structure,” Science. 2011

 4.29. “Group loyalties cannot exist in the absence of clearly defined groups.” Douglas Fry, “Group Identity as an Obstacle and Catalyst for Peace,” from Pathways to Peace: The Transformative Power of Children and Families, J. F. Leckman, C. Panter-Brick, and R. Salah (eds). 2014.

4.30. They found that most deadly incidents “were perpetrated by lone individuals, and almost two-thirds resulted from accidents, interfamilial disputes, within-group executions [for violating the rules], or interpersonal motives such as competition over a particular woman.” Douglas Fry, Patrik Soderberg, “Lethal Aggression in Mobile Forager Bands and Implications for the Origins of War,” Science. 2013

 4.31. “We know little about the evolution of [these] egalitarian societies,” Wiessner has written. “What is clear, however, is that once established, egalitarian relations between individuals and social groups greatly facilitate sharing, reciprocity, and mobility.” Polly Wiessner, “From Spears to M-16s: Testing the Imbalance of Power Hypothesis among the Enga.” Journal of Anthropological Research. 2006

4.32. “To permit intergroup conflict or feuding to harden social and territorial boundaries would be literally suicidal.” Robert Tonkinson, “Resolving Conflict from Within the Law: The Mardu Aborigines of Australa,” from Keeping the Peace: Conflict Resolution and Peaceful Societies Around the World. Kemp, Fry (eds). 2004

4.33. “People were far more cosmopolitan than the term ‘tribesmen’ suggests. “They moved about, traded, and negotiated, and constantly chose among the various alternatives for action.” Eleanor Leacock, “Women's Status in Egalitarian Society: Implications for Social Evolution.” Current Anthropology. 1978.

 4.34. Simply put, hunter-gatherer society—or as they call it, “nomadic forager” society—"is not conducive to making war.” Douglas Fry and Patrik Soderberg, “Myths about hunter-gatherers redux: nomadic forager war and peace” Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research. 2014

 4.35. While “the mere sight of an unknown chimpanzee sparks fear, hostility, and aggression” in chimps…”humans treat other humans not known to be a threat, or not obviously a member of a group assumed to be hostile, as potentially cooperative.” Peter Richerson and Joe Henrich, “Tribal Social Instincts and the Cultural Evolution of Institutions to Solve Collective Action Problems,” Cliodynamics: the Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History, 2012

4.36. “Human cultural innovation was supercharged because hundreds and then millions of innovators were uniquely able to accept and cooperate with strangers.” Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity. 2020.

4.37. “Consider two very large prehuman populations, the Geniuses and the Butterflies.” Joe Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. 2015 

4.38. “With oxytocin, even at a distance, we could feel kindness toward an approaching stranger we could see was like us.” Brian Hare, Vanessa Woods, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity. 2020.

 4.39. According to the men who developed the idea, social psychologists Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen, mere belonging is “an entryway to a social relationship—a small cue of social connection to another person or group.” Gregory Walton, et al, “Mere Belonging: The Power of Social Connections,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2012.

 4.40. The kids showed the strongest preference for their own gender, but after that, they overwhelmingly liked members of their own red or blue groups more, gave them more coins, wanted to play with them, and made more positive judgements about their character. Yarrow Dunham, et al, “Consequences of ‘Minimal’ Group Affiliations in Children,” Child Development, 2011.

 4.41. Another experiment, this one involving adults, found that people were more likely to help a stranger who was dressed like them. Tim Emswiller, et al. “Similarity, sex, and requests for small favors.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1971.

 4.42. One found that when undergraduates were told that they shared a birthday or a first name with a stranger, or had a similar fingerprint, they were more likely to comply with that person’s request to donate money or offer feedback on a paper. Jerry Burger, et al. “What a Coincidence! The Effects of Incidental Similarity on Compliance,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2004

 4.43. Another found that people were far more inclined to like a salesperson and showed a stronger intention to buy from them if they were told they shared a birthday. Lan Jiang, et al., “The Persuasive Role of Incidental Similarity on Attitudes and Purchase Intentions in a Sales Context,” Journal of Consumer Research, 2010 ·

 4.44. Jones and company created a sense of threat by asking participants to write about their biggest drawbacks as potential dating partners, and found that the people who felt threatened were even more attracted to hypothetical partners with a similar last name to theirs. John T. Jones et al., “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Js: Implicit Egotism and Interpersonal Attraction.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2004

 4.45. One study, done by psychologists John Finch and Robert Cialdini in 1989, had participants read a biographical article on Rasputin, the “Mad Monk of Russia.” John Finch, Robeet Cialdini, “Another Indirect Tactic of (Self-)Image Management: Boosting.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 1989

4.46. Nearly 2000 years ago, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote of his fellow man, “He and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet, or eyelids, or like the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. Penguin, 2004.

4.47. The primatologist Frans De Waal has called humans “bipolar apes”… Frans De Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates. 2013.

 4.48. Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell, professors at Duke and Harvard respectively who between them specialize in an intimidating array of disciplines. They argue that humans have a moral “dial,” which depending on the circumstances, can be adjusted to become more inclusive or more exclusionary. Allen Buchanan, Russell Powell, The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory. 2018

 4.49. The earliest archeological evidence of mass murder, for instance, dates back just 10,000 years, found by Lake Turkana in Kenya, shortly after the advent of agriculture. Marta Mirazón Lahr, et al, “Inter-group violence among early Holocene hunter-gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya.” Nature. 2016

 4.50. A similar discovery in Germany, believed to be a mass execution, is believed to be some 7,000 years old. All the victims’ shinbones had been shattered. Christian Meyer, et al, “The massacre mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2015

 4.51. No longer could our ancestors melt into the forest or move away in times of conflict. They now had something to defend, which means the neighbors did, too, which meant the neighbors had something worth stealing. War as we know it began. Paul Seabright, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life. 2004

 4.52. The new societies oriented themselves around dominance and not cooperation. The position of women was degraded as societies focused more on trading and fighting. Riane Eisler, The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future. 1987

 4.53. In 1935, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the condition of indigenous people in the United States, “By dispersing their families, by obscuring their traditions, by disrupting their chain of memories…European tyranny has made them more unruly and less civilized than they were before. Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Penguin edition. 2003.

 4.54. Rev. Jedidiah Morse made the same observation, writing to the U.S. Secretary of War after a tour of Native American communities in 1820, “I have always experienced the greatest hospitality and kindness among those Indians who have had the least intercourse with white people.” Jedidiah Morse, “A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States, on Indian Affairs, Comprising Narrative of a Tour.” 1822

 4.55. Believed to have migrated from Africa 50,000 years ago and remained largely untouched since, the fiercely private Andamanese have been called “arguably the most enigmatic people on our planet.” Nicholas Wade, “An Ancient Link to Africa Lives on in Bay of Bengal,” The New York Times, December 10, 2002

 4.56. After initial “contact” with European outsiders beginning in the 18th century, the population was decimated by violence and pathogens brought by the newcomers. After that, a fear of strangers took on a supernatural dimension. Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. The Andaman Islanders: A Study in Social Anthropology. 1906.

Chapter 5. How to Talk to a Dozen Strangers at Once

5.1. Studies have also shown that when one person expresses something personal, the other person will match them. They will, in fact, follow one another in terms of the depths of their own disclosures. Zick Rubin, “Lovers and Other Strangers: The Development of Intimacy in Encounters and Relationships: Experimental studies of self-disclosure between strangers at bus stops and in airport departure lounges can provide clues about the development of intimate relationships.” American Scientist. 1974.

5.2. “These findings suggest that the human tendency to convey information about personal experience may arise from the intrinsic value associated with self-disclosure.” Diana Tamir, Jason Mitchell. “Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2012

 5.3. An analysis of existing studies by psychologists Nancy Collins and Lynn Carol Miller found that people who disclose—as long as it’s appropriate and you’re not emptying your weirdest, darkest stuff on a person riding the bus—are perceived as more likable. Nancy Collins, Lynn Carol Miller, “Self-Disclosure and Liking: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Psychological Bulletin. 1994.

 5.4. “This means people look to one another for cues as to what sort of response is called for. If a person sitting next to you on a train talks about the fuel shortage, you are likely to respond in kind.” Zick Rubin, “Disclosing oneself to a stranger: Reciprocity and its limits.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 1975

Chapter 6. Talking to Strangers: Paleolithic Edition.

6.1. My favorite lighter example comes from the Korowai people of West Papua, Indonesia. Their word for foreigner—laleo—has acquired two meanings. The first is “foreign humans.” And the second: “dead non-human monsters. Rupert Stasch, Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place, 2009

 6.2. He wrote in his diary that “I felt some fear but mostly was disappointed they didn’t accept me right away.” Alex Perry, “The Last Days of John Allen Chau,” Outside, 2019

 6.3. In 1932, anthropologist Donald Thompson recounted one scene, from Cape York in northern Australia. Donald F. Thomson, “Ceremonial Presentation of Fire in North Queensland.” Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 1932.

6.4. “Throughout the continent, failure of a visiting person or party to announce its presence to the local residents is taken as a prelude to an act of hostility and provokes the likelihood of aggression from the territory occupiers.” Nicolas Peterson. “Hunter-Gatherer Territoriality: The Perspective from Australia.” American Anthropologist. 1975

6.5. In 1934, anthropologists Viktor Lebzelter and Richard Neuse observed another ritual among the San (then known as the Bushmen) in the Kalahari Desert… Viktor Lebzelter and Richard Neuse. Native Cultures In Southwest And South Africa: Vol. 2. 1934.

6.6. “Their word for stranger is ju dole. Ju means person, dole means strange or harmful—one word for both concepts, in the !Kung language, as though they were a single concept…” Lorna Marshall. “Kin Terminology System Of The !Kung Bushmen.” Africa 27. 1957.

6.7. Franz Boas published a memorable account of greeting rituals among the Canadian Inuits of southeastern Baffin Island. Franz Boas. “The Central Eskimo: Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-1885.” 1888

 6.8. “[A tense situation] can be resolved by the two of you sitting down, each of you naming yourself and your relatives and exactly how you are related to them, and continuing in an effort to identify a relative in common..” Jared Diamond, The World Until Yesterday: What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies. 2012.

6.9. “Economically a newcomer is an asset to the tribe. He not only increases numbers, he may add to its wealth in goods, in offspring, in specialized knowledge and skill.” Otto Friedrich Raum. “Social Functions of Avoidances and Taboos Among The Zulu.” Monographien Zur Völkerkunde. 1973.

 6.10. “During this period the local people have an opportunity of observing [the strangers] and deciding whether they are ‘dangerous’ or not, and also whether they can be assimilated into their social life. Only after the period of probation, and when the people in the immediate neighborhood have indicated their acceptance of the strangers, can they build their own homes.” Harriet Ngubane, “Body And Mind In Zulu Medicine: An Ethnography Of Health And Disease In Nyuswa-Zulu Thought And Practice.” Studies In Anthropology. 1977.

6.11. [footnote] Otto Friedrich Raum, who studied the Zulu, was lauded in an obituary for showing how “ritualised behavior helps to distinguish a polite person from an impolite person.” Peter Skalník. “Otto Friedrich Raum (1903-2002) - An Obituary.” Sociologus, 2004

Chapter 7. Meet the Murderer and the Man from Another Dimension

7.1. In his 1971 memoir, the great British actor David Niven recounts a cruise he took as a young man… David Niven, The Moon’s a Balloon. 1971

7.2. “The conversation, like many others I had had on trains, derived an easy candor from the shared journey, the comfort of the dining car, and the certain knowledge that neither of us would see each other again.” Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia. 1975

7.3. I had also recently happened upon a magazine story about taking the train across the country, in which the writer observed, “Train people are … individuals for whom small talk is as invigorating as a rail of cocaine.” Caity Weaver, “We’re All In This Together: The Particular Sheen of America By Amtrak,” The New York Times Magazine, March 20, 2019

Chapter 8. How Humans Came to Rely on the Kindness of Strangers

8.1. Jesus gives her another chance. He miraculously causes the cake in her oven grow larger, giving her more food to share. She stiffs them again. At this point, Jesus and Peter decide they have seen enough, and they turn her into an owl. Carmen Blacker. “The Folklore of the Stranger: A Consideration of a Disguised Wandering Saint.” Folklore. 1990

8.2. In a variation that appeared in Baltic countries, Jesus and Peter punish the miser by forcing her to raise two snakes as foster children. Sith Thomson, The Folktale. 1946.

8.3. In another version, this one Scandinavian, she is turned into a woodpecker. In Germany, they turn her into a cuckoo…These stories aren’t just Christian, nor are they limited to Europe or the Middle Ages. A Moroccan version, which also turned up in Spain, Russia, and Turkey, features the Prophet Muhammad in the beggar role. Blacker, “The Folklore of the Stranger: A Consideration of a Disguised Wandering Saint.”

8.4. In a Native American folktale, it’s an old woman and her grandson who are turned away by stingy townspeople. They punish the misers by turning them and all of their children into birds. From: First People

8.5. “You must eat something, drink some wine, and tell me where you are from and the hard times you’ve seen,” he says. “All wanderers and beggars come from Zeus.” Homer, The Odyssey, Everyman’s Library Classics edition, Robert Fitzgerald, trans. 1992

8.6. Later, in 360 BC, Plato warned, “He who has a spark of caution in him, will do his best to pass through life without sinning against the stranger.” Plato, Laws. B Jowett trans. Aeterna Press. 2015.

8.7. In 1906, Edvard Westermarck, a well-traveled Finnish philosopher considered one of the founders of sociology, published a book called The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, in which he examined dozens of traditional societies that extended generous hospitality to strangers. Edvard Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, 1906

8.8. Andy Rotman, a theologian who has traveled widely in India, reports that the connection between hospitality and divinity lives on there. Andy Rotman, “Buddhism and Hospitality: Expecting the Unexpected and Acting Virtuously. In Hosting the Stranger: Between Religions, Kearney, Taylor, eds. 2011

8.9. To the Balga, Shyrock wrote in 2012, “a house without guests, without the spaces necessary to take them in, and without the materials needed to prepare food and drink, is not only weak, it is shameful.” “Breaking hospitality apart: bad hosts, bad guests, and the problem of sovereignty,” Andrew Shyrock, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 18, 2012

8.10. “‘A burning in the skin’ inherited ‘from the father and the grandfathers.” One Balgawi man told Shyrock, “Karam is not just a matter of food and drink. Hospitality is from the soul; it’s from the blood.” Andrew Shryock. “Thinking about Hospitality, with Derrida, Kant, and the Balga Bedouin.” Anthropos. 2008.

8.11. [Footnote] “It has sometimes happened that strangers behaved rudely and laid out a field in the territory of another tribe without having asked for permission to do it. Nicolaus Adriani and Albert Christiaan Kruyt. Bare’E-Speaking Toradja Of Central Celebes (The East Toradja): Third Volume. 1951.

8.21. In putting down stakes, Jones writes, these settlers “were creating a fixed human landscape that enabled a new kind of mobility for travelers, over considerable distances. Martin Jones, Feast: Why Humans Share Food. 2008.

8.22. In today’s world, an abundance of idle men, especially younger ones, can be trouble—"deprived of status or purpose, they become prone to vice and violence in an effort to recapture their lost status.” Valerie Hudson, Andrea Den Boer, “A Surplus of Men, A Deficit of Peace: Security and Sex Ratios in Asia’s Largest States,” International Security. 2002.

8.23. In lieu of centralized states, these relationships provided contacts, news, and potential alliances that made travel through the Greek world possible. Julian Pitt-Rivers, "The law of hospitality," HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 2002

8.24. And if you developed a reputation as a good host, others may come to you, presenting the potential for more relationships, that secured your place in the world and shielded you from the buffeting winds of the age. M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus. 2002 edition.

8.25. For the Greeks…“a stranger was almost always welcomed immediately upon arrival; to delay the welcome was a disgrace to the host.” Oscar Nybakken, “The Moral Basis of Hospitium Privatum,” The Classical Journal. 1946.

8.26. The philosopher Nietzsche argued that hospitality was a way of “paralyzing the hostile in the stranger,” but it may have been as much about paralyzing the fear in the host. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1954. The Gay Science (found in Florian Mühlfried’s Mistrust: A Global Perspective, 2019.)

8.27. At that moment, “fearful strangers can become guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them.” Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. 1975.

8.28. And reciprocity is “the cement that holds any society together…Once you have exchanged something, you are related.” Julian Pitt-Rivers, “Postscript: the place of grace in anthropology.” In Honor and Grace in Anthropology, J. G. Peristiany and J. Pitt-Rivers, eds. 1992.

8.29. “The arrival of a stranger breaks up the eternal recurrence of daily events and opens the door to the extraordinary…The stranger is thus attributed the power to break up the familiar.” Florian Mühlfried, Mistrust: A Global Perspective, 2019.

8.30. “To offer hospitality to a stranger is to welcome something new, unfamiliar, and unknown… Thomas Ogletree, Hospitality to the Stranger: Dimensions of Moral Understanding. 1985.

Chapter 9. How to Listen to Strangers

9.1. Two prominent Israeli business professors…argued in the Harvard Business Review that the best way for managers to become good listeners is to do just what Mathes is recommending. Guy Itzchakov and Avi Kluger, “Giving Feedback: The Power of Listening in Helping People Change.” Harvard Business Review. 2018.

9.2. A substantial body of research has arrived at many of the same conclusions—dating back to one of the fathers of clinical psychology, Carl Rogers, who believed that empathic listening could heal individuals, alleviate social problems, and end war. Carl Rogers, Client-centered therapy. 1951

9.3. Researchers have found that people who feel listened to have a stronger sense of well-being and feel less anxious. They feel safer to speak their minds without fear of rejection or repudiation, which makes them less defensive and more likely to speak truthfully. Guy Itzchakov et al., “The Listener Sets the Tone: High-Quality Listening Increases Attitude Clarity and Behavior-Intention Consequences.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2018.

9.4. Alerted to rising rates of reported loneliness by the likes of U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy—who said in 2016, “despite the ubiquity of social media, we are facing an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation” which could also seriously damage sufferers’ physical health. TED Talk, by Dr. Murthy

9.5. One study by the American College Health Association found that more than half of college students report being lonely. American College Health Association: National college health assessment II: Undergraduate student reference group. 2017

9.6. A large scale 2018 survey by the health insurance company Cigna found that 18-22 year-olds reporter higher levels of loneliness than all other age cohorts. Cigna U.S. Loneliness Index: Survey of 20,000 Americans Examining Behaviors Driving Loneliness in the United States. 2018

9.7. Another study still reported a 40 percent drop in empathy among college students over the past thirty years. Sara Konrath, “Changes in dispositional empathy in American college students over time: A meta-analysis.” Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2010

9.8. She saw students becoming more isolated, struggling to connect with others. One even confessed to her that she avoids ordering pizza from places she has to actually call, because talking to the stranger on the other end of the line stressed her out. Sarah Tracy, “Let’s Talk: Conversation as a Defining Moment for the Communication Discipline.” Health Communication, 2019

9.9. [footnote] Incidentally, I happened upon a story in a local paper in Massachusetts about Danielle Crafford, a woman who had become a successful builder. She attributed part of her success to her father’s efforts to get her used to talking to strangers. Susannah Sudborough, “Taunton native shatters glass ceiling one hard hat and hard conversation at a time.” The Taunton Gazette. November 9, 2020

9.10. Cris Tietsort, another PhD student and friend of Truscelli’s. He and a colleague, Kyle Hanners, created a study in which they enlisted fourteen participants, all eighteen or nineteen years old, and had them do free listening weekly for five weeks. Cristopher John Tietsort et al, ”Practicing Free Listening: An Experience in Relational Reflexivity.” Unpublished.

9.11. A Quaker theologian by the name of Parker Palmer defines hospitality as “inviting the stranger into our private space, whether that be the space of our own home or the space of our personal awareness and concern.” Parker Palmer, The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America’s Public Life. 1981.

Chapter 10. The God of Strangers

10.1. “The sea peoples may have been a symptom of the catastrophe rather than its cause.” Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. 2006

10.2. They found that once societies hit about a million people, moralizing gods appeared. Harvey Whitehouse, et al, “Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history.” Nature. 2019.

10.3. “Religions seem to know a great deal about our loneliness.” Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Nonbeliever’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, 2011

10.4. “Don’t worry that other people don’t know you; worry that you don’t know other people,” and “ideal people are universal and not clannish. Small minded people are clannish and not universal.” Confucius, The Analects; from The Essential Confucius, T. Cleary ed. 1993.

10.5. “The religious communities constituted by Western religions are typically constituted by culturally different groups of people, who may be considered the same because they subscribe to the same creed…” Arvind Sharma, “Letters, Notes & Comments,” The Journal of Religious Ethics. 2000.

10.6. “The violence of the Bible…came from the world the people who wrote it lived in. Sheer violence was their one absolute.” James Carroll, Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World. 2011

10.7. Jethro epitomizes “a certain type of Biblical stranger, in which the them isn’t the opposite of us, but instead the complement of us.” Christiana van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law: A Study of the Changing Legal Status of Strangers in Ancient Israel. 1991

10.8. “For many readers in an age haunted by violence—often sponsored, sanctioned, and sanctified by religious ideologies—this is an ugly, repugnant story that scarcely deserves retelling.” L. Daniel Hawk, “Conquest Reconfigured: Recasting Warfare in the Redaction of Joshua.” In Writing and Reading War: Rhetoric, Gender, and Ethics in Biblical and Modern Contexts, Kelle and Ames eds. 2008.

10.9. “Rahab, not the Israelites, sets in motion the implementation of God’s plans.” Adriane Leveen, Biblical Narratives of Israelites and Their Neighbors: Strangers at the Gate. 2017.

 10.10. Another unexpected feature of the Hebrew Bible—especially to those of us who recall it as a fervid, xenophobic bloodbath—is the presence of the ger. The ger has been the subject of a great deal of scholarship. But Rabbi Ethan Tucker recorded a multi-part lecture on the topic, available here.

10.11. “The cities of the empire were incredibly disorganized.” Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries. 1997

10.12. “If we imagined the British empire of a hundred years ago all in one piece, all of its parts touching each other so one could travel…from Rangoon to Belfast without the interposition of any ocean, and if we could thus sense as one whole an almost limitless diversity of tongues, cults, traditions, and levels of education, then the true nature of the Mediterranean world in [the era]… would strike our minds.” Ramsay McMullen, quoted in Stark, The Rise of Christianity.

10.13. Jesus came out of Galilee—a motley, rowdy place in its own right, largely out of the reach of Jerusalem, with a mix of Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, and Syrians living shoulder to shoulder with one another. Michael Zank, Jerusalem: A Brief History. 2018

10.14. Early Christians created “a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services.” Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity. 1979.

10.15. “To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments.” Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity

10.16. “Since all are strangers, no one is a stranger anymore.” Thomas W. Ogletree, Hospitality to the Stranger: Dimensions of Moral Understanding. 1985.

10.17. 2.3 billion humans on the planet identify as Christians, a third of the population. Conrad Hackett, David McClendon, “Christians remain world’s largest religious group, but they are declining in Europe.” Pew Research Center. 2017.

10.18. “In order to integrate immigrants with the local Muslims, the Prophet declared brotherhood between every immigrant and local Muslim, and he asked the local Muslims to help the immigrants.” Zeki Saritoprak, “The Qur’anic Perspective on Immigrants: Prophet Muhammad’s Migration and Its Implications in Our Modern Society.” The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning. 2011.

10.19. The king of Mecca saw this force, and is said to have wondered, “What kind of army is this?” Muhammad entered the city unopposed, and instead of killing everyone, extended amnesty to anyone who surrendered. “Go your way, you are free,” he told them. Ziauddin Sardar, Mecca: The Sacred City, 2014.

10.20. “And do good to parents, kinsfolk, orphans…” The Koran. Verse 4:36

10.21. “Islam began as something strange…”

10.22. “Live in this world as if you are a stranger…”

10.23. James Joyce described religion as a “net,” like nationality, a thing to be avoided if you ever wanted to meet your full potential, and I’m inclined to agree with him. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916

10.24. Muslims are the second biggest single community of strangers yet devised, when 1.8 billion humans on the planet identify as Muslims, a quarter of the population of the planet. Jeff Diamant, “The countries with the 10 largest Christian populations and the 10 largest Muslim populations,” Pew Research Center, April 1, 2019

Chapter 11. Strangers in the City

11.1. “New faces appeared only at the time of marriage or when itinerant peddlers came with their wares. Familiarity was the most constant measure of human relations, and strangers were regarded with wariness and misgiving.” Monica Smith, Cities: The First 6,000 Years. 2019.

11.2.“A city is composed of different kinds of men; Similar people cannot bring a city into existence.” Aristotle, Politics

11.3. “In a big city, full of scheming, idle people without religion or principle, whose imagination, depraved by sloth, inactivity, the love of pleasure, and great needs, engenders only monsters and inspires only crimes.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Letter to M. D’Alembert On the Theater.” 1758

11.4. The sociologist Emile Durkheim argued in 1897 that being surrounded by so many strangers will scramble our brains and lead to calamity. Emile Durkheim, Suicide, 1897

11.5. Georg Simmel…conceded that the city can be exciting, but also argued that living in it requires a “thousand individual modifications” to one’s personality. Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and the Mental Life,” 1903

11.6. Louis Wirth echoed Simmel, arguing that while being “a most favorable breeding ground of new biological and cultural hybrids.” Louis Wirth, Urbanism as a Way of Life. 1938.

11.7. “While those closest to our hearts are synonymous with home, consequential strangers anchor us in the world and give us a sense of being plugged into something larger.” Karen Fingerman, Melinda Blau, Consequential Strangers: Turning Everyday Encounters into Life-Changing Moments. 2009

11.8. “To the extent we include another in the self, we take on the resources, perspectives, and identities of that person.” Arthur Aron, et al. “The Self-Expansion Model of Motivation and Cognition in Close Relationships,” in The Oxford Handbook of Close Relationships, J.A. Simpson, L. Campbell, eds. 2013.

11.9. “Yet many people think it worth living in even the worst of them. Why? Because cities have the potential to make us more complex human beings.” Richard Sennett, “A Flexible City of Strangers,” Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2001.

11.10. “I left for reasons people have always left small towns: not because I didn’t value it, but because I believed my development waited elsewhere.” William Giraldi, The Hero’s Body: A Memoir. 2016.

11.11. But for our purposes, Milgram’s most noteworthy idea is overload. Stanley Milgram, “The Experience of Living in Cities,” in The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments, 1977.

11.12. Lyn Lofland … observed a number of methods people employed to regulate inputs. Lyn Lofland, A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space. 1973

11.13. Researchers since the 1970s have found positive correlations between average walking speed, population size… Marc Bornstein, Helen Bornstein, “The Pace of Life,” Nature, 1976

11.14. …and wealth of a city. Robert Levine, Ara Norenzayan, “The Pace of Life in 31 Countries.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 1999

11.15. Goffman’s contribution is something called “civil inattention.” Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order, 1971

11.16. “One understands [the stranger] to possess a basic level of humanness, [and] that one admits them into the human family, that one accepts their claims to the rights of citizenship.” Lyn Lofland, The Public Realm: Exploring the City’s Quintessential Public Territory. 1988.

11.17. “Social media has become a platform for establishing social ties, receiving education, and sharing of resources that may not otherwise be available to individuals on the margins of society.” Yulia Cannon et al, “Transition, Connection, Disconnection, and Social Media: Examining the Digital Lived Experiences of Transgender Individuals.” Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling. 2017.

11.18. One study…found that participants instructed to keep their phones on the table during dinner with family or friends reported enjoying the meal less than participants asked to keep their phones in their pockets, because they felt more distracted. Ryan Dwyer, et al, “Smartphone use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face social interactions,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2018

11.19. Another study…found that in the context of a waiting room, students with smartphones were 24 percent less likely to talk to others, and 30 percent less likely to smile, than students without phones. Kostadin Kushlev, et al, “Smartphones reduce smiles between strangers.” Computers in Human Behavior. 2018.

11.20. “Smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting them altogether…We find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment.” Kostadin Kushlev et al, “The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being.” Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2018.

11.21. A 2015 Pew poll found that almost half of young people between 18 and 29 report using their phones to avoid interacting with other people. Pew Research Center, “U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015.”

11.21. According to what is known as “the principle of least effort,” humans tend to follow the path of least resistance. Guillaume Ferrero, “Mental inertia and the law of least effort.” Revue Philosophique, 1894

11.22. “Nothing contributes as much to one’s sense of belonging to a community as ‘membership’ in a third place,” Oldenburg concluded. “It has to do with surviving and, indeed, thriving.” Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of Community. 1999 edition.

11.23. They found that participants with higher socioeconomic statuses showed significantly less engagement, and those from lower statuses showed more. Michael Kraus, Dacher Keltner, „Signs of Socioeconomic Status: A Thin-Slicing Approach,” Psychological Science, 2009.

11.24. “They are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled upon and their singularities ignored.” Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, 2004

Chapter 12. Why Are We So Afraid of Strangers? 

12.1. Dangers of all sorts are ubiquitous in the Semai world. Clayton A. Robarchek, “Learning to Fear: A Case Study of Emotional Conditioning,” American Ethnologist, 1979.

 12.2. “To keep their children safe from kidnappers, Semai taught their children to fear strangers.” Robert Dentan, “Ambivalences in Child Training By the Semai of Penninsular Malaysia and Other Peoples.” Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 2001.

 12.3. In 1981, a boy named Adam Walsh was abducted from a shopping mall in Hollywood, Florida, and murdered, by Otis Toole, a man posthumously discovered to be a serial killer. Pierre Thomas, Scott Michaels, “Case Closed: Police ID Adam Walsh Killer,” ABC News, December 16, 2008.

 12.4. In a one-year period ending in 2011, strangers were responsible for just 65 child abductions, while some 258,000 abductions were committed by family members and people known to the victim. Janis Wolak, et al., “Child Victims of Stereotypical Kidnappings Known to Law Enforcement in 2011.” Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice. 2011. See also: Ashli-Jade Douglas, “Crimes Against Children Spotlight,” Law Enforcement Bulletin, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Augist 1, 2011

12.5. [footnote] It’s important to note, however, that strangers commit a larger percentage of total crimes against children. Still, that number is roughly 10 percent. Janis Wolak, et al., “Child Victims of Stereotypical Kidnappings Known to Law Enforcement in 2011.” Juvenile Justice Bulletin. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 2016

12.6. “In every instance where the media provided tools or tips on how parents should keep their children safe from abduction, there were zero references to protecting children from parental/familial abductions.” Carleigh Smith, “Perilous Parents and Sinister Strangers: Canadian Mainstream Media Portrayals of Child Abduction.” Master’s thesis. 2019.

12.7. “While pointers such as these are fine, the book fails by putting so much emphasis on protecting children from outsiders, when most child abuse occurs in the home at the hands of frustrated parents, angry boyfriends and jealous stepparents.” Diana Griego, “The Problem Begins at Home,” New York Times, Oct. 19, 1986

12.8. “How many social or economic opportunities do we miss by simply being afraid of strangers?” Laura Nishikawa and Dietlind Stolle, “Do Not Trust Strangers: How Parents Shape the Generalized Trust of Their Children,” in Trust: Comparative Perspectives, Sasaki and Marsh, eds. 2012

12.9. Every year, researchers at Chapman University, in Orange, California, conduct a nationwide survey of American fears. Chapman University Survey of American Fears, Wave 5. 2018

12.10. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, in 2016, 85 percent of murders in America were committed by people the victims knew. Allison Ertl et al., “Surveillance for Violent Deaths: National Violent Death Reporting System, 32 States.” Surveillance Summaries, CDC. 2016.

12.11. According to a 2017 survey by the CDC, 19.1 percent of sexual assaults against women, and 18.6 percent of sexual assaults against men, were committed by strangers. Sharon G. Smith, et al. “The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2010-2012 State Report.”

12.12. “When friends, colleagues, and acquaintances looked away or crossed the street to avoid contact, fear grew.” Timothy Snider, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. 2017.

12.13. “Members of intense groups erect boundaries, create distance between themselves and others. Not always because the stranger is abhorrent but because she may be beguiling.” Martin Marty, When Faiths Collide. 2005.

Chapter 13. How Fear of Strangers Can Make Us Friendly

13.1. “Generally speaking,” the question asks, “would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Society at a Glance 2016: OECD Social Indicators.” 2016

13.2. “Trusting people are more likely to volunteer their time, to give to charity, to be tolerant of others, and to support policies that both promote economic growth and that provide support for the less fortunate.” Eric Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust. 2002.

13.3. Generalized trust also plays a role in the success of larger companies, where an ability to cooperate with strangers from different backgrounds. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. 1995

13.4. “Generalized trust is the basis of reciprocity, social connectedness, peaceful collective action, inclusiveness, tolerance, gender equality, confidence in institutions, and democracy itself.” Jan Delhey, “How General Is Trust in ‘Most People’? Solving the Radius of Trust Problem,” American Sociological Review. 2011.

13.5. So who trusts? Generally speaking, people in rural areas score lower on generalized trust… Jan Delhey, et al, “Predicting Cross-National Levels of Social Trust: Global Pattern or Nordic Exceptionalism?” European Sociological Review. 2005.

13.6. …as do people from largely Confucian countries… Jan Delhey, “How General Is Trust in ‘Most People’? Solving the Radius of Trust Problem,” American Sociological Review. 2011.

13.7. Countries with a legacy of communism, with their decades of personal experience with corruption and totalitarianism, are low trusters. Men, older people, the less educated, the unemployed, and members of minority groups, as well as religious fundamentalists, also tend to score lower on generalized trust. Eric Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust. 2002.

13.8. On a national level, general trust has been loosely correlated with gross national product, negatively associated with levels of segregation… Eric Uslaner, Segregation and Mistrust: Diversity, Isolation, and Social Cohesion, 2012

13.9. “When some people have far more than others, neither those at the top nor those at the bottom are likely to consider the other as part of their ‘moral community.” Eric Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust. 2002.

13.10. “When survival is insecure, people tend to close ranks behind a strong leader, forming a united front against outsiders.” Ron Inglehart, Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations Are Changing, and Reshaping the World. 2018

13.11. Thornhill and Fincher call this the “parasite stress theory.” Randy Thornhill, Corey Fincher, The Parasite Stress Theory of Values and Sociality: Infectious Disease, History, and Human Values Worldwide. 2014

13.12. When Nazis isolated Jews in ghettoes, they hung signs bearing messages such as “Plague! Entry forbidden!” on the gates. Rich Cohen. The Avengers: A Jewish War Story. 2000

13.13. In America, in 1962, when the late Congressman Elijah Cummings was eleven, he was part of a group that attempted to integrate a public pool in Baltimore. He was met by an estimated 1,000 white people carrying signs reading “Keep Our Pool Germ Free.” Gillian Brockwell, “A white mob attacked Elijah Cummings for integrating a swimming pool. He was 11.” Washington Post, October 17, 2019

13.14. Participants who watched the disease slideshow reported being less extraverted, less open-minded toward new people and new experiences, and less cooperative. Chad Mortensen, et al, “Infection Breeds Reticence: The Effects of Disease Salience on Self-Perceptions of Personality and Behavioral Avoidance Tendencies,” Psychological Science. 2010.

13.15. The reason why attempts to describe members of other groups—particularly immigrants and minorities—in terms of uncleanliness and disease so often find an audience is because we’ve evolved to be so highly sensitive to the threat of infectious disease. Corey Fincher, Randy Thornhill, “Parasite-stress promotes in-group assortative sociality: The cases of strong family ties and heightened religiosity,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2012.  

13.16. According to data from the World Values Survey compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the top trusters in the 35-nation OECD include… OECD, “Trust”, in Society at a Glance 2016: OECD Social Indicators. 2016.

13.17. Meanwhile, an organization called InterNations conducts an annual survey of expats around the world, in part to rank countries by friendliness. InterNations, “Expat Insider: Top 10 Countries for Friendliness.” 2019

13.18. In 2019, Yuna Blajer de la Garza, a sociologist at the University of Chicago published a paper on viene-vienes in Mexico City. Yuna Blajer de la Garza, “Leaving Your Car with Strangers: Informal Car Parkers and Improbable Trust in Mexico City.” Politics & Society. 2019

13.19. According to a theory by psychologists Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett, the south is “a culture of honor.” Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett, “Insult, Aggression, and the Southern Culture of Honor: An ‘Experimental Ethnography,’” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1996.

13.20. “Cultures of honor, which rely heavily on aggression and male honor, are common adaptations among populations living in stateless regions and that depend upon easily stolen herds.” Pauline Grosjean, “A History of Violence: The Culture of Honor and Homicide in the U.S. South.” Journal of the European Economic Association. 2014.

13.21. Cohen and Nisbett, gathered northern students and southern students—all men—and placed them in situations where their honor would be insulted. Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett, “Insult, Aggression, and the Southern Culture of Honor: An ‘Experimental Ethnography,’” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1996.

13.22. “Violence, or the threat of violence, can create a society where friendliness, congeniality, and politeness are the norm.” Dov Cohen, Joe Vandello, “The Paradox of Politeness,” in Cultural Shaping of Violence: Victimization, Escalation, Response, M. Anderson (ed.). 2004.

13.23. People tend to be “extraordinarily afraid of each other” and thus “may act in extremely polite, gracious, or generous fashion, but these social acts may or may not entail corresponding feelings of love, liking, or trust.” Alan Fiske, et al. “The Cultural Matrix of Social Psychology,” in The Handbook of Social Psychology, DT Gilbert, ST Fiske, eds. 1998

13.24. People who live in countries that have experienced immigration from a greater number of different countries over the last 500 years are more emotionally expressive, more likely to smile, and more likely to laugh. Magdalena Rychlowska, et al, “Heterogeneity of long-history migration explains cultural differences in reports of emotional expressivity and the functions of smiles.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2015.

 13.25. Another global study, led by psychologist Paula Niedenthal, found a strong correlation between historic heterogeneity and the amount of time respondents spent each day smiling, laughing, and feeling good. Paula Niedenthal, et al, “Heterogeneity of long-history migration predicts smiling, laughter and positive emotion across the globe and within the United States.” PLoS ONE. 2018

13.26. Cultures that practice simpatía … emphasize politeness, kindness, friendliness, respect, positivity, and avoidance of conflict, and deference to other people in everyday interactions. Harry Triandis, et al, “Simpatía as a cultural script of Hispanics.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1984.

13.27. “Considering that some of these places suffer from long-term political instability, high crime rates and a potpourri of other social, economic and environmental ills, these positive results are noteworthy.” Robert Levine, “The Kindness of Strangers: People’s willingness to help someone during a chance encounter on a city street varies considerably around the world.” American Scientist. 2003

13.28. Of the top ten happiest nations in this regard, nine were in Latin America (the other one was Indonesia). Gallup, “Gallup Global Emotions 2019”

13.29. In a series of ingenious studies, psychologists Gloriana Rodríguez-Arauz, our friend Ramírez-Esparza, Adrián García-Sierra, and colleagues, demonstrated how this could work. Gloriana Rodríguez-Arauz, et al, “You Go Before Me, Please: Behavioral Politeness and Interdependent Self as Markers of Simpatía in Latinas,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. 2019. And Nairan Ramırez-Esparza, et al “No laughing matter: Latinas’ high quality of conversations relate to behavioral laughter.” PLoS ONE. 2019.

 13.30. “Latino dyad members reported their interactions to be more smooth, natural, and relaxed (and significantly less forced, awkward, and strained). They also reported their interactions to be more involving and indicated that they felt more accepted and respected by their interaction partner.” Renee A. Holloway, et al, “Evidence That a Simpatico Self-Schema Accounts for Differences in the Self-Concepts and Social Behavior of Latinos Versus Whites (and Blacks),” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2009.

Chapter 14. How to Procreate with Strangers in Finland

14.1. It is the capital of Finland, “the happiest country in the world,” according to Gallup. Gallup World Happiness Report, 2020

14.2. A small, illustrated book called Finnish Nightmares, containing a litany of local horrors... Karoliina Korhonen, Finnish Nightmares: An Irreverent Guide to Life’s Awkward Moments. 2019

14.3. “Instead of searching for a niche in which I would be safe, instead of torturing myself with questions about what my true passions or talents are, I shall aim to get a taste, even just a nibble, of what it is possible to experience as a human being.” Theodore Zeldin, The Hidden Pleasures of Life, 2015

14.4. “The kind of conversation I’m interested in is one in which you start with a willingness to emerge a slightly different person,” he writes. Theodore Zeldin, Conversation: How Talk Can Change Your Life. 2000

14.5. “Individuals who honestly express their emotions experience lower stress and blood pressure, and develop higher levels of intimacy than individuals who hide their emotions.” Emma Levine, Taya Cohen, “You Can Handle the Truth: Mispredicting the Consequences of Honest Communication,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018.

14.6. These were very similar to what we would be given at the Feast of Strangers, though they were partly drawn from the work of Arthur Aron, who in 1997 devised his famous list of 36 questions that will lead to immediate intimacy between strangers. Arthur Aron, et al, “The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 1997

14.7. “People can sometimes achieve a surprising degree of intimacy with total strangers.” Zick Rubin, “Lovers and Other Strangers: The Development of Intimacy in Encounters and Relationships: Experimental studies of self-disclosure between strangers at bus stops and in airport departure lounges can provide clues about the development of intimate relationships.” American Scientist. 1974

14.8. “This is a deeper hospitality because it is not just politeness, but involves admitting new ideas and emotions temporarily into one’s mind.” Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity. 1994.

Chapter 15. Okay, So When Are We Allowed to Talk to Strangers?

15.1. At these times, anyone can talk, “even persons of extremely disparate social positions.” This and the rest of the Goffman material in this chapter comes from: Erving Goffman, Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. 1963

15.2. “Triangulation [is]… the process by which some external stimulus provides a linkage between people and prompts strangers to talk to each other as though they were not.” William Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, 1980

15.3. He found that the most popular spots had some distinct characteristics… William Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, 1980

15.4. [footnote] Farmer’s markets, it turns out, are especially good for encouraging spontaneous interactions. Robert Sommer, et al, “The behavioral ecology of supermarkets and farmers' markets,” Journal of Environmental Psychology, 1981

15.5. He calls these places “cosmopolitan canopies.” Elijah Anderson, Cosmopolitan Canopies: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, 2011

15.6. And while she meticulously documented all the ways people avoid doing so, she also observed the two types of people for whom the rules never seemed to apply. Lyn Lofland, A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space. 1973

Chapter 16. How to Talk to Strangers

16.1. “English weather-speak is a form of code, evolved to help us overcome our natural reserve and actually talk to each other.” Kate Fox, Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior. 2004

16.2. Harvard psychologist Karen Huang and her colleagues discovered that “people who ask more questions, particularly follow-up questions, are better liked by their conversation partners.” Karen Huang, et al, “It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2017

16.3. In these cases, people will probably just talk about themselves, which studies show they do twice as often as they talk about other matters… Robin Dunbar et al, “Human conversational behavior.” Human Nature 8. 1997

16.4. …which, ironically, makes people like them less. Jonathan, Zev Berman et al, “The Braggart's Dilemma: On the Social Rewards and Penalties of Advertising Prosocial Behavior,” Journal of Marketing Research. 2015.

16.5. “Research has shown that mimicry … leads to greater liking of the mimicker and helps create rapport during a social interaction.” Nicolas Guéguen and Angélique Martin, “Incidental Similarity Facilitates Behavioral Mimicry,” Social Psychology. 2009.

 16.6. [footnote] This, I cannot stress enough, is different from staring, or glaring, or leering, which triggers not oxytocin release, but flight. Phoebe Ellsworth, et al. “The stare as a stimulus to flight in human subjects: a series of field experiments.” Journal of personality and social psychology. 1972

Chapter 17. Talking to Strangers in the Field

17.1. We believe that people who look us in the eye are interested in us, and, if we speak, in what we’re saying. Mark Leary, “Making sense of self-esteem.” Current Directions in Psychological Science. 1999

17.2. Participants who were placed in a situation in which someone refused to make eye contact with them, reported feeling ostracized and aggressive toward that person. James Wirth, et al. Eye Gaze as Relational Evaluation: Averted Eye Gaze Leads to Feelings of Ostracism and Relational Devaluation. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin. 2010

17.3. Only 45.4 percent of the students who were looked at noticed, but those who did reported feeling less disconnected than the students who were ignored. Eric Wesselmann, et al, “To be looked at as though air: Civil attention matters.” Psychological Science, 2012

17.4. Six sessions of loving-kindness meditation reduced depression and negativity in participants, and increased well-being, life satisfaction, the perception of social support and social connectedness, and improved existing relationships. Burt Uchino, et al, “Loving-Kindness Meditation Improves Relationship Negativity and Psychological Well-Being: A Pilot Study.” Psychology, 2016

17.5. “This easily implemented technique may help to increase positive social emotions and decrease social isolation.” Cendri Hutcherson, et al, “Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness.” Emotion, 2008

Chapter 18. Talking to Them

18.1. In a 2017 study, John Paul Wilson of Montclair State University, asked non-black American participants to compare photos of same-sized young white men and young black men. John Paul Wilson, et al., “Racial bias in judgments of physical size and formidability: From size to threat.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2017.

18.2. That study followed years of research that have yielded a raft of related findings… Joshua M. Ackerman, et al. “They All Look the Same to Me (Unless They're Angry): From Out-Group Homogeneity to Out-Group Heterogeneity,” Psychological Science, 2006

18.3. “People who don’t know me particularly well talk about how they can see a kindness in my eyes, or feel a kindness that I have deep within. Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. 2017

18.4. “Once you get into higher education,” he explained, “you learn to go with a generic Union accent fast.” Whet Moser, Chicago. December 27, 2012.

18.5. In his landmark history of nativism in America, the historian John Higham accumulated a veritable catalogue of people likening immigrants to animals and pathogens. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. 1955.

18.6. “What kind of criminality will happen?” Arit John, “Protestors Block Buses Full of Migrant Children in California,” The Atlantic. July 2, 2014

18.7. [footnote] The political scientist Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia has shown that anti-immigrant sentiment isn’t tied to the state of a nation’s economy, but is far more likely to be a response to a symbolic threat. Ariane Chebel d’Appollonia, Frontiers of Fear: Immigration and Insecurity in the United States and Europe. 2012.

18.8. The psychologist Walter Stephan calls this “intergroup anxiety,” and believes that anxiety is “why such interactions are often more complicated and difficult than interactions with ingroup members.” Walter Stephan, “Intergroup Anxiety: Theory, Research, and Practice,” Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2014.

18.9. Because the prospect of talking across these boundaries induces anxiety even in less overtly prejudiced people, intergroup anxiety can lead to people simply avoiding one another altogether. Jens Binder, et al, “Does Contact Reduce Prejudice or Does Prejudice Reduce Contact? A Longitudinal Test of the Contact Hypothesis Among Majority and Minority Groups in Three European Countries,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2009.

18.10. The journalist Bill Bishop has argued persuasively that the growing self-segregation in America, which he calls “The Big Sort,” is a primary driver behind political polarization. Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. 2008

18.11. This led to an unhappy discovery by the great political scientist Robert Putnam. Robert Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century.” Scandinavian Political Studies. 2007

18.12. It isn’t diversity per se that leads to distrust and alienation, Uslaner has found. It’s segregation. Eric Uslaner, Segregation and Mistrust: Diversity, Isolation, and Social Cohesion, 2012

18.13. Noting, the dearth of research into people’s expectations for talking to strangers across these divides, the psychologist Robyn Mallett led a series of experiments in 2008 to find out. Robyn Mallett, et al. “Expect the unexpected: Failure to anticipate similarities leads to an intergroup forecasting error.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2008

18.14. “Tolerance for difference is but a first step. To strengthen shared identities, we need more opportunities for meaningful interaction across ethnic lines where Americans (new and old) work, learn, recreate, and live.” Robert Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century.” Scandinavian Political Studies. 2007

18.16. “It means that citizens no longer think it sensible, or feel secure enough, to place their fates in the hands of democratic strangers.” Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown V. Board of Education, 2004

18.17. In 2020, the commission released an ambitious report called “Our Common Purpose.” The Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2020.

Chapter 18. How to Talk to Enemy Strangers 

18.1. A 2018 poll published in the Journal of Politics found that Republicans vastly over- estimated how many Democrats are gay, Black, and atheist, and Democrats likewise overestimated how many Republicans were old, rich, evangelical, and southern. Douglas Ahler and Gaurav Sood, ”The Parties in our Heads: Misperceptions About Party Composition and Their Consequences,” Journal of Politics. 2018.

18.2. The liberals tend to like the personal conversations, the conservatives tend to like the debates, which lines up with political science research. Janoff-Bulman, et al. “Social Justice and Social Order: Binding Moralities across the Political Spectrum.” PLOS One. 2016

18.3. Northwestern University’s Nour Ktiely found in 2016 that the single biggest driver behind dehumanization is the belief that the other side is dehumanizing us. Nour Kteily, “They see us as less than human: Metadehumanization predicts intergroup conflict via reciprocal dehumanization.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2016.

18.4. In 1954, a psychologist by the name of Gordon Allport formulated what is known as his “contact hypothesis.” Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 1954

18.5. They found that it’s ideal to have all of Allport’s conditions in place in order to make progress. But they also found that contact of any duration can increase liking, and “generalize” beyond the individuals who we meet. T. Pettigrew, L. Tropp, “A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2006

18.6. And if they become actual friends, that’s the most effective way we know of to alleviate prejudice—not just between the friends, but among the friends of friends as well. Pablo De Tezanos-Pinto, et al. “What will the others think? In-group norms as a mediator of the effects of intergroup contact.” British Journal of Social Psychology. 2010.

18.7. Across the board, people rated those with opposing views as less human…but they also found that when the views were conveyed verbally—via the video—participants rated those who held them as more human than they did in the transcript condition. Schroeder, et al, “The Humanizing Voice: Speech Reveals, and Text Conceals, a More Thoughtful Mind in the Midst of Disagreement.” Psychological Science. 2017

18.8. It “enables speakers to delve deeper into their consciousness and discover new insights about themselves—even those that may challenge previously held beliefs and perceptions.” Guy Itzchakov, Avi Kluger, “Giving Feedback: The Power of Listening in Helping People Change.” Harvard Business Review. 2018.

18.9. In a 2018 paper, Itzchakov and his colleagues “found that speakers who conversed with a good listener reported attitudes that were more complex and less extreme.” Guy Itzchakov, et al. “The Listener Sets the Tone: High-Quality Listening Increases Attitude Clarity and Behavior-Intention Consequences.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2018.

18.10. “We concluded that when speakers share meaningful stories they make their partner listen well and consequently experience higher psychological safety and lower feelings of social anxiety.” Guy Itzchakov, et al, “If You Want People to Listen to You, Tell a Story,” International Journal of Listening, 2016.

Chapter 21. A New Social Renaissance

21.1. “An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger: the stranger’s presence making you the stranger, less to the stranger than to yourself.” James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work, 1976

21.2. Since the 1970s, Americans, as well as people across the west, have retreated from public life and from one another. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. 2000.

21.3. “Our society appears to be in a state of social decline,” writes psychologist Oscar Ybarra, “not one in which the environment is chaotic and people fear for their lives, but one in which people have fewer interactions and relations with others.” Oscar Ybarra et al. “Mental Exercising Through Simple Socializing: Social Interaction Promotes General Cognitive Functioning.” Personality Social Psychology Bulletin. 2008.

 21.4. Psychologists have found that lonely people can withdraw even further from society as a result of the pain of their loneliness. John T. Cacioppo, et al. “Evolutionary mechanisms for loneliness,” Cognition and Emotion, 2014

21.5. [footnote] It’s worth quoting George Bernard Shaw on this one: “Independence? That’s middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.” George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, 1913

21.6. Quarantine was traumatic to many people. Depression rates tripled, according to one study. Catherine Ettman, et al. “Prevalence of Depression Symptoms in US Adults Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” JAMA Network Open. 2020

21.7. Psychologists worried that it would permanently alter children who lived through it, giving rise to what they called “Generation Agoraphobia.” Alex Williams, “Generation Agoraphobia: After months of lockdown, adults just want to get out of the house. For some children, the issue is more fraught.” New York Times. October 16, 2020.

21.8 “A desperate effort to put up with the absence of men, to ignore one's human insignificance and frailty in the huge, hostile Land of the Djinn,” or desert people. Ibrahim Ag Youssouf, et al. “Greetings in the Desert,” American Ethnologist, 1976.

21.9. “The stranger is no longer the exception, but the rule.” Lesley Harman, “The Modern Stranger: On Language and Membership,” Language Problems and Language Planning, 1991.

21.10. “To encounter oneself is to encounter the other. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does, too: and if I can respect this, both of us can live.” James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work. 1976.

21.11. “The ability to experience people of different nations, creeds and colors with pleasure, curiosity, and interest, and not with suspicion, disdain, or simply a disinterest that could occasionally turn into loathing.” Margaret Jacob, Strangers Nowhere In the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe. 2006

21.12. “One outcome of the tribal psychology mind-set is that people may be inclined to perceive threats where none exist.” Walter Stephan, “Intergroup Anxiety: Theory, Research, and Practice,” Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2014.

21.13. Immanuel Kant defined cosmopolitanism as the “ultimate purpose” of nature, the culmination. Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent." 1784

21.14. A 1751 dictionary defined cosmopolitans as “strangers nowhere in the world.” Found in: Jacob, Strangers Nowhere In the World.