pocket and waved it to the crowd. “This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor Herr Hitler, and here is a paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.”
Then it was back to the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street.
“My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.”
The crowd cheered.
“Now I recommend you go home, and sleep quietly in your beds.”
In March 1939, Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. It had taken him less than six months to break his agreement with Chamberlain. On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and the world was at war.
We have, in other words, CIA officers who cannot make sense of their spies, judges who cannot make sense of their defendants, and prime ministers who cannot make sense of their adversaries. We have people struggling with their first impressions of a stranger. We have people struggling when they have months to understand a stranger. We have people struggling when they meet with someone only once, and people struggling when they return to the stranger again and again. They struggle with assessing a stranger’s honesty. They struggle with a stranger’s character. They struggle with a stranger’s intent.
It’s a mess.
6.
One last thing:
Take a look at the following word, and fill in the two blank letters. Do it quickly, without thinking.
G L _ _
This is called a word-completion task. Psychologists commonly use it to test things such as memory.
I completed G L _ _ as GLUM. Remember that. The next word is:
_ _TER
I completed that as HATER. Remember that too. Here are the rest of the words:
S_ _RE
P_ _ N
TOU_ _
ATT_ _ _
BO_ _
FL_ _ T
SL_ T
STR_ _ _
GO_ _
CHE_ _
_ _OR
SL_ _ _
SC _ _ _
_ _ NNER
B_ _ T
PO _ _ _
BA_ _
_RA_
_ _ _EAT
I started out with GLUM and HATER and ended up with SCARE, ATTACK, BORE, FLOUT, SLIT, CHEAT, TRAP, and DEFEAT. That’s a pretty morbid and melancholy list. But I don’t think that says anything about the darkness of my soul. I’m not melancholy. I’m an optimist. I think that the first word, GLUM, popped into my head, and then I just continued in that vein.
A few years ago, a team of psychologists led by Emily Pronin gave a group of people that same exercise. Pronin had them fill in the blank spaces. Then she asked them the same question: What do you think your choices say about you? For instance, if you completed TOU_ _ as TOUCH, does that suggest that you are a different kind of person than if you completed it as TOUGH? The respondents took the same position I did. They’re just words.
“I don’t agree with these word-stem completions as a measure of my personality,” one of Pronin’s subjects wrote. And the others in the group agreed:
“These word completions don’t seem to reveal much about me at all.…Random completions.”
“Some of the words I wrote seem to be the antithesis of how I view the world. For instance, I hope that I am not always concerned about being STRONG, the BEST, or a WINNER.”
“I don’t really think that my word completions reveal that much about me.… Occurred as a result of happenstance.”
“Not a whole lot.… They reveal vocabulary.”
“I really don’t think there was any relationship.… The words are just random.”
“The words PAIN, ATTACK, and THREAT seem similar, but I don’t know that they say anything about me.”
But then things got interesting. Pronin gave the group other people’s words. These were perfect strangers. She asked the same question. What do you think this stranger’s choices reveal? And this time Pronin’s panel completely changed their minds.
“He doesn’t seem to read too much, since the natural (to me) completion of B_ _K would be BOOK. BEAK seems rather random, and might indicate deliberate unfocus of mind.”
“I get the feeling that whoever did this is pretty vain, but basically a nice guy.”
Keep in mind that these are the exact same people who just moments before had denied that the exercise had any meaning at all.
“The person seems goal-oriented and thinks about competitive settings.”
“I have a feeling that the individual in question may be tired very often in his or her life. In addition, I think that he or she might be interested in having close personal interactions with someone of the opposite sex. The person