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The Gift of Fear (And Some memories) - Part 2


written by: Kosjenka Muk





Warning signals


Many times, people are confused about their fear because a future attacker's behavior doesn't match their conscious image of a criminal's behavior. Some criminals spontaneously use strategies that confuse potential victims so that they would pay less attention to their survival signals. Here are some of these manipulative strategies according to "The Gift of Fear":

  1. Forced teaming. A way of speaking which indicates that the criminal is somehow associated, familiar, or shares the same experience as a potential victim. The word "we" is often used: "How are we going to do this?" Another example: "You'd do the same for me." The last example indicates that another strategy is simultaneously used...

  1. Unwanted help, gift or service with the goal of creating feeling of debt. (This is often used by beggars and marketing experts.) People usually have an inner sense of balance, and if they receive a favor, they might feel that they have to do something in return to restore balance. A skillful criminal will impose some insignificant service on a potential victim, while planning to use that sense of obligation later.

  1. Charm and niceness. Conscious charming behavior is a strategy, and a strategy has a purpose. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of an (overly) nice person in the beginning.

  2. Too many details. People who know that their comments or claims are untrue, feel a need to support them with unnecessary details to make them seem more believable and to distract a potential victim. Such people might give you excuses why they are at a certain place, why they are going in the same direction, and for other details in their behavior.

  1. Typecasting / labeling. A manipulative strategy popularized by so-called pick-up artists. It involves a slight insult that a potential victim would try to prove not to be true. An example Gavin de Becker gives is of a man who offered to carry a woman's grocery bags into her apartment. When she initially refused (her intuition was giving her warning signals), he said, "There is such a thing as being too proud, you know". In her desire to avoid the label, she accepted his offer.

  1. Unsolicited promises. In the previous example, the criminal said to the woman, "I'll just put this stuff down and go, I promise." A stalker might say to the victim, "Meet me this one time and you'll never hear from me again, I promise." The reason why a criminal feels a need to offer such a promise is that he knows there is a reason to doubt.

  1. Discounting the word "No". It can mean refusing to notice non-verbal rejection, or ignoring or criticizing verbal rejection. A criminal might test a potential victim on some small issue to see if there is indecisiveness. Some of the previous strategies might also be used to discount a refusal.

 

Some 2 weeks after the experience I described on the previous page, I found myself again on an empty road (this time in daylight). By then, I've already left the guesthouse and I was using local buses to explore the Big Island, but since buses didn't always go straight to the places I wanted to visit, from time to time I had to walk.

This time, I felt rather relaxed and stayed on the right side of the road. A car appeared from behind, slowed down and stopped by my side. I was tense, but when the driver opened his window and asked if I needed a lift, I took a look at him and said, "Yes, sure." (Perhaps I'm too used to living in a relatively safe environment.) The ride was fine and we parted on friendly terms.

When returning home from Hawaii, I had 9 hours between flights in San Francisco, so I decided to make a short trip to the town. I took a bus and asked the driver to tell me when we come close to the center. I got out at the bus stop he indicated. It was 6 AM, the streets were empty and the city looked the same in every direction. I chose a direction that seemed most likely and started walking. I was on the left side of the street. After a while, a car appeared from behind, made a U-turn in front of a red traffic light, came to my side and stopped. The driver opened a window and said, "You are not from here, aren't you? Do you know where are you going?" I said, "Not really." He said, "You are going straight into the ghetto."

Next he said that he was an (illegal) taxi driver and offered a minimal price to take me to the center of the city. I told him, "You know I shouldn't get into strangers' cars." However, after a few seconds, I added, "But I trust you. I'll go with you."

He took me downtown and to a few local attractions. A couple of times, I left my backpack in his car while I went to make some photos. He waited for me. When we were parting, he told me that my trust meant a lot to him because he spent 18 years in prison and now was striving to live a principled life.

Why was my intuition so relaxed even if my conscious mind was worried? Perhaps something in the facial features and expressions of those two men, something in their body language and the way they stopped the car - there was no such force and speed as in the first example. Besides, there was none of the manipulation signals I listed above (which I didn't notice consciously, but my instinct apparently did). There were no unnecessary details or explanations, distractions or persuasion. The illegal taxi driver didn't try to change my mind, but perceived my initial reluctance as reasonable and justified.

Please, do not take the above examples as a suggestion to do risky things. They are here only to illustrate how in certain situations my intuition was calm even if my conscious mind was tense. Besides, according to Myers-Briggs typology, introverted intuition is my dominant cognitive function, which means it might not work the same for someone else. Therefore, I wouldn't like anybody to do something they wouldn't do otherwise based on these two examples. On the other hand, I do hope that this article might save some more lives.


"To successfully navigate through morning traffic, we make amazingly accurate high-stakes predictions about the behavior of literally thousands of people. We unconsciously read tiny untaught signals: the slight tilt of a stranger's head or the momentarily sustained glance of a person a hundred feet away tells us it's safe to pass in front of his two-ton monster. We expect all the drivers to act just as we would, but we still alertly detect those few who might not – so that we are also predicting their behavior, unpredictable though we might call it. So here we are, traveling along faster than anyone before the 1900's ever traveled (unless they were falling off a cliff), dodging giant, high-momentum steel missiles, judging the intent of their operators with fantastic accuracy, and then saying we can't predict human behavior."

Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear

(back to part 1)

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." - C.G. Jung



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