“Mismatched” is the term Gladwell assigns to people whose external behaviors and demeanor do not align with their inner character or state of mind, or who do not behave the way society expects them to behave. His primary example of a mismatched person is Amanda Knox, whose bizarre behavior in the aftermath of her roommate’s 2007 murder made her appear outwardly guilty when she was in fact innocent.
Mismatched Quotes in Talking to Strangers
The Talking to Strangers quotes below are all either spoken by Mismatched or refer to Mismatched. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 7
Quotes
“There is no trace of me in the room where Meredith was murdered,” Knox says, at the end of the Amanda Knox documentary. “But you’re trying to find the answer in my eyes.…You’re looking at me. Why? These are my eyes. They’re not objective evidence.”
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Chapter 12
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To Encinia’s mind, Bland’s demeanor fits the profile of a potentially dangerous criminal. She’s agitated, jumpy, irritable, confrontational, volatile. He thinks she’s hiding something. This is dangerously flawed thinking at the best of times. Human beings are not transparent. But when is this kind of thinking most dangerous? When the people we observe are mismatched: when they do not behave the way we expect them to behave.
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Mismatched Term Timeline in Talking to Strangers
The timeline below shows where the term Mismatched appears in Talking to Strangers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Seven: A (Short) Explanation of the Amanda Knox Case
...necessarily bad lie detectors—they’re simply bad at detecting lies “when the person we’re judging is mismatched.”
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...the crimes of which Markopolos accused him. Gladwell reasons that this is because “Madoff was mismatched. He was a liar with the demeanor of an honest man.” Although Ocrant knew that...
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3. To Gladwell, Amanda Knox is an apt example of the mismatched, of “the innocent person who acts guilty.” The media misunderstood and attacked Knox, fixating on...
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...performed above average when determining the guilt or innocence of “matched” people, their judgement of mismatched people proved to be highly problematic. In fact, law enforcement correctly identified the guilt or...
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Chapter Twelve: Sandra Bland
...thinking “dangerously flawed” under normal circumstances, and even more so when we apply it to “mismatched” people. And Sandra Bland is mismatched: she is an innocent person who Encinia believes is...
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