I don’t know if you should place a lot of trust in any stranger. Most people use algorithms built into us by evolution when deciding who to trust. That’s where racism comes from. It’s build into our genes that it is safer to trust someone who looks like you than it is to trust someone who looks quite different. In the absence of other information, we fall back on how a person looks.
We do have other information to take into account. Clothing, manner of speech, environmental context, and body language are among the factors we use to make instant decisions.
When I was growing up, people were still hitchhiking on a regular basis. I got one ride from Buffalo to…. maybe Syracuse. This woman said she was afraid she might be having a heart attack and she wanted someone in the car just in case. I don’t know if I was the first hitchhiker she saw, or if she saw me, assessed how dangerous I looked compared to the level of her need, and she stopped.
As it happened, I was trustworthy. As it happens, I never got a bad ride. However, it was always an adventure opening the door for the first time after the ride has stopped. Do you want to get into that car?
I think it’s nearly impossible to understand our thoughts at a moment like that. We probably aren’t really thinking consciously. It’s more a subconscious process.
However, knowing that, you can do things. I used to do door to door fundraising. In apartment buildings in New York City, you had to be able to have people look at you and hear your voice and open their doors for you. I raised the pitch of my voice and put a kind of happy lilt in it. I always stepped back a little so they could see all of me, and make sure I didn’t have any weapons. Mostly though, I think it was my voice and what I said and the way I said it.
So now, I know all those tricks, and when I am approached, I know instantly what’s happening. I can shut someone down in seconds if I want to. I know how to create a tone of voice that says “no, and I mean it!”
Anyway, you want to look as unthreatening as possible. Avoid harsh language or threatening body postures. Present yourself as a nice, polite person.
In the end, however, I think we need to be careful of anyone. Someone could be pretending to be unthreatening. So you have to be able to see beyond the surface to the heart of a person. That usually takes time. You look for consistency in behavior, and you use your nose to see whether any story they tell you could be real, or if it’s too much. It’s not an easy thing, but you get better at it as you get older, so long as you are paying attention.
