The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

by Gavin de Becker

Since he was dressed and supposedly leaving, he had no other reason to close her window. It was that subtle signal that warned her, but it was fear that gave her the courage to get up without hesitation and follow close behind the man who intended to kill her. She later described a fear so complete that it replaced every feeling in her body. Like an animal hiding inside her, it opened to its full size and stood up using the muscles in her legs. “I had nothing to do with it,” she explained. “I was a passenger moving down that hallway.” What she experienced was real fear, not like when we are startled, not like the fear we feel at a movie, or the fear of public speaking. This fear is the powerful ally that says, “Do what I tell you to do.”

In a very real sense, the surging water in an ocean does not move; rather, energy moves through it. In this same sense, the energy of violence moves through our culture. Some experience it as a light but unpleasant breeze, easy to tolerate. Others are destroyed by it, as if by a hurricane. But nobody—nobody—is untouched. Violence is a part of America, and more than that, it is a part of our species. It is around us, and it is in us. As the most powerful people in history, we have climbed to the top of the world food chain, so to speak. Facing not one single enemy or predator who poses to us any danger of consequence, we’ve found the only prey left: ourselves.

I’ve presented these facts about the frequency of violence for a reason: to increase the likelihood that you will believe it is at least possible that you or someone you care for will be a victim at some time. That belief is a key element in recognizing when you are in the presence of danger. That belief balances denial, the powerful and cunning enemy of successful predictions. Even having learned these facts of life and death, some readers will still compartmentalize the hazards in order to exclude themselves: “Sure, there’s a lot of violence, but that’s in the inner city;” “Yeah, a lot of women are battered, but I’m not in a relationship now;” “Violence is a problem for younger people, or older people;” “You’re only at risk if you’re out late at night;” “People bring it on themselves,” and on and on. Americans are experts at denial, a choir whose song could be titled, “Things Like That Don’t Happen in This Neighborhood.”

Justice is swell, but safety is survival.

If intuition is used by a woman to explain some choice she made or a concern she can’t let go of, men roll their eyes and write it off. We much prefer logic, the grounded, explainable, unemotional thought process that ends in a supportable conclusion. In fact, Americans worship logic, even when it’s wrong, and deny intuition, even when it’s right.

Men, of course, have their own version of intuition, not so light and inconsequential, they tell themselves, as that feminine stuff. Theirs is more viscerally named a “ gut feeling,” but it isn’t just a feeling. It is a process more extraordinary and ultimately more logical in the natural order than the most fantastic computer calculation. It is our most complex cognitive process and at the same time the simplest.

The husband and wife who make an appointment with me to discuss the harassing and threatening phone calls they are getting want me to figure out who is doing it. Based on what the caller says, it’s obvious he is someone they know, but who? Her ex-husband? That weird guy who used to rent a room from them? A neighbor angry about their construction work? The contractor they fired? The expert will tell them who it is, they think, but actually they will tell me. It’s true I have experience with thousands of cases, but they have the experience with this one. Inside them, perhaps trapped where I can help find it, is all the information needed to make an accurate evaluation. At some point in our discussion of possible suspects, the woman will invariably say something like this: “You know, there is one other person, and I don’t have any concrete reasons for thinking it’s him. I just have this feeling, and I hate to even suggest it, but…” And right there I could send them home and send my bill, because that is who it will be.

People do things, we say, “out of the blue,” “all of a sudden,” “out of nowhere.” These phrases support the popular myth that predicting human behavior isn’t possible. Yet 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 is 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 may 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 a fantastic accuracy, and then saying we can’t predict human behavior.

Sometimes a violent act is so frightening that we call the perpetrator a monster, but as you’ll see, it is by finding his humanness—his similarity to you and me—that such an act can be predicted.

The truth is that every thought is preceded by a perception, every impulse is preceded by a thought, every action is preceded by an impulse, and man is not so private a being that his behavior is unseen, his patterns undetectable.

Pre-incident indicators are those detectable factors that occur before the outcome being predicted. Stepping on the first rung of a ladder is a significant pre-incident indicator to reaching the top; stepping on the sixth even more so. Since everything a person does is created twice—once in the mind and once in its execution—ideas and impulses are pre-incident indicators for action. The woman’s threats to kill revealed an idea that was one step toward the outcome; her introduction of the gun into the argument with her husband was another, as was its purchase some months earlier.

In A Natural History of the Senses, author Diane Ackerman says, “The brain is a good stagehand. It gets on with its work while we’re busy acting out our scenes. When we see an object, the whole peninsula of our senses wakes up to appraise the new sight. All the brain’s shopkeepers consider it from their point of view, all the civil servants, all the accountants, all the students, all the farmers, all the mechanics.” We could add the soldiers and guards to Ackerman’s list, for it is they who evaluate the context in which things occur, the appropriateness and significance of literally everything we sense.

“You are what you know.”

Today, Burke notes, we live according to still another truth, and “like the people of the past, we disregard phenomena which do not fit our view because they are ‘wrong’ or outdated. Like our ancestors, we know the real truth.”

One of the doctors who reviewed how people had performed in that operating room could have been speaking about denial in general when he astutely said: “It’s like waking up in your house with a room full of smoke, opening the window to let the smoke out, and then going back to bed.”

Though we live in space-age times, we still have stone-age minds. We are competitive and territorial and violent, just like our simian ancestors. There are people who insist this isn’t so, who insist that they could never kill anyone, but they invariably add a telling caveat: “Unless, of course, a person tried to harm someone I love.” So the resource of violence is in everyone; all that changes is our view of the justification.

Studying and interviewing those who use violence to reach their goals, I long ago learned that I must find in them some part of myself, and, more disturbingly at times, find in myself some part of them. There must be a place to hook the line before I drop down into the dark mine of some dark mind; there must be something familiar to hold on to.

Their violent acts were repugnant, to be sure, but not inhuman.

It is true that the majority of these men are exactly where they belong; to unleash them on society would be unthinkable, but we cannot disregard their humanness, because if we do, I believe, we become less human in the process.

Imagine what you believe is the worst thing anyone might ever do to another human being; imagine something worse than anything you’ve ever seen in a movie, or read about or heard about. Imagine something original. Pause in your reading and conjure this awful thing. Now, by virtue of the fact that you could conceive it, rest assured it has likely been done to someone, because everything that can be done by a human being to another human being has been done. Acts of extraordinary horror and violence happen, and we cannot learn why they happen by looking at rare behavior as if it is something outside ourselves. That idea you just conjured was in you, and thus it is part of us. To really work toward prediction and prevention, we must accept that these acts are done by people included in the “we” of humanity, not by interlopers who somehow sneaked in.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. For when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”)

Even things that would frighten most people could not distract me as a boy, for I had become so familiar with danger that it no longer caused alarm. Just as a surgeon loses his aversion to gore, so does the violent criminal. You can spot this feature in people who do not react as you might to shocking things. When everyone else who just witnessed a hostile argument is shaken up, for example, this person is calm.

Kelly asks me what signals her attacker displayed, and I start with the one I call “forced teaming.” It was shown through his use of the word “we” (“We’ve got a hungry cat up there”). Forced teaming is an effective way to establish premature trust because a we’re-in-the-same-boat attitude is hard to rebuff without feeling rude. Sharing a predicament, like being stuck in a stalled elevator or arriving simultaneously at a just-closed store will understandably move people around social boundaries. But forced teaming is not about coincidence; it is intentional and directed, and it is one of the most sophisticated manipulations. The detectable signal of forced teaming is the projection of a shared purpose or experience where none exists: “Both of us;” “we’re some team;” “how are we going to handle this?;” “now we’ve done it,” etc.

Safety is the preeminent concern of all creatures and it clearly justifies a seemingly abrupt and rejecting response from time to time. Anyway, rudeness is relative. If while waiting in some line, a person steps on our foot a second time, and we bark, “Hey!” we don’t call our response rude. We might even feel we showed restraint. That’s because the appropriateness of our response is relative to the behavior that provoked it. If people would view forced teaming as the inappropriate behavior it is, we might feel less concern about appearing rude in response.

Generally speaking, rapport-building has a far better reputation than it deserves. It is perceived as admirable when in fact it is almost always done for self-serving reasons. Even though the reasons most people seek rapport aren’t sinister, such as pleasantly conversing with someone you’ve just met at a party, that doesn’t mean a woman must participate with every stranger who approaches her. Perhaps the most admirable reason to seek rapport would be to put someone at ease, but if that is a stranger’s entire intent, a far simpler way is to just leave the woman alone.

Charm is another overrated ability. Note that I called it an ability, not an inherent feature of one’s personality. Charm is almost always a directed instrument, which, like rapport-building, has motive. To charm is to compel, to control by allure or attraction. Think of charm as a verb, not a trait. If you consciously tell yourself, “This person is trying to charm me” as opposed to, “This person is charming,” you’ll be able to see around it. Most often, when you see what’s behind charm, it won’t be sinister, but other times you’ll be glad you looked.

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait.

I tell her about a rhyme by Edward Gorey, the master of dark humor: The proctor buys a pupil ices And hopes the boy will not resist, When he attempts to practice vices Few people even know exist.

When people are telling the truth, they don’t feel doubted, so they don’t feel the need for additional support in the form of details. When people lie, however, even if what they say sounds credible to you, it doesn’t sound credible to them, so they keep talking.

A good exercise is to occasionally remind yourself of where you are and what your relationship is to the people around you. With a date who stays beyond his welcome, for example, no matter how jokey or charming he may be, a woman can keep herself focused on context simply by thinking, “I have asked him to leave twice.”

Another strategy used by Kelly’s rapist is called typecasting. A man labels a woman in some slightly critical way, hoping she’ll feel compelled to prove that his opinion is not accurate. “You’re probably too snobbish to talk to the likes of me,” a man might say, and the woman will cast off the mantle of “snob” by talking to him. A man tells a woman, “You don’t look like someone who reads the newspaper,” and she sets out to prove that she is intelligent and well-informed. When Kelly refused her attacker’s assistance, he said, “There’s such thing as being too proud, you know,” and she resisted the label by accepting his help.

The next signal I explain to Kelly is one I call loan-sharking: “He wanted to be allowed to help you because that would place you in his debt, and the fact that you owe a person something makes it hard to ask him to leave you alone.”

The unsolicited promise is one of the most reliable signals because it is nearly always of questionable motive. Promises are used to convince us of an intention, but they are not guarantees. A guarantee is a promise that offers some compensation if the speaker fails to deliver; he commits to make it all right again if things don’t go as he says they would. But promises offer no such collateral. They are the very hollowest instruments of speech, showing nothing more than the speaker’s desire to convince you of something. So, aside from meeting all unsolicited promises with skepticism (whether or not they are about safety), it’s useful to ask yourself: Why does this person need to convince me? The answer, it turns out, is not about him—it is about you.

Declining to hear “no” is a signal that someone is either seeking control or refusing to relinquish it. With strangers, even those with the best intentions, never, ever relent on the issue of “no,” because it sets the stage for more efforts to control. If you let someone talk you out of the word “no,” you might as well wear a sign that reads, “You are in charge.” The worst response when someone fails to accept “no” is to give ever-weakening refusals and then give in. Another common response that serves the criminal is to negotiate (“I really appreciate your offer, but let me try to do it on my own first”). Negotiations are about possibilities, and providing access to someone who makes you apprehensive is not a possibility you want to keep on the agenda. I encourage people to remember that “no” is a complete sentence.

You’re right. I shouldn’t be wary. I’m overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I’ve personally heard horror stories from every female friend I’ve ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven’t figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he’d do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I’m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards DOESN’T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD ‘NO’.”

At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.

Most new IMPACT students are very concerned that they must avoid making a man angry, reasoning that this could turn someone whose intent was favorable into someone dangerous. Be aware, however, that it is impossible in this context to transform an ordinary, decent man into a rapist or killer. Thankfully, though, it is possible to transform yourself into a person who responds to the signals and is thus a less likely victim.

Remember, the nicest guy, the guy with no self-serving agenda whatsoever, the one who wants nothing from you, won’t approach you at all. You are not comparing the man who approaches you to all men, the vast majority of whom have no sinister intent. Instead, you are comparing him to other men who make unsolicited approaches to women alone, or to other men who don’t listen when you say no.

This was said most artfully by Michelangelo when asked how he created his famous statue of David. He said “it is easy—you just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.”

These puzzles show something else too, something about the differences between intuition and conscious prediction. If the solution to one of these puzzles does not come right away, it is then a matter of letting the answer surface in you, because stare though you may, there is no additional information forthcoming from the puzzle itself. If you solve one, the answer was available in you somewhere. Many people resist this idea, believing that they solve the puzzles by moving the letters around and trying them in different order, as if they were anagrams. But they are not anagrams and they have no consistent rules, and people often get them immediately without having the time to figure them out.

Anger is a very seductive emotion because it is profoundly energizing and exhilarating.

Does the person perceive that he has available alternatives to violence that will move him toward the outcome he wants? Since violence, like any behavior, has a purpose, it’s valuable to know the goal of the actor. For example, if a person wants his job back, violence is not the most effective strategy, since it precludes the very outcome he seeks. Conversely, if he wants revenge, violence is a viable strategy, though usually not the only one. Alternatives to violence might be ridicule, smear campaigns, lawsuits, or inflicting some other nonphysical harm on the targeted person or organization. Knowing the desired outcome is the key.

Prediction moves from a science to an art when you realize that pre-incident indicators are actually part of the incident.

The same is true for homicide. Though we might try to explain a murder using simple cause-and-effect logic (e.g., “He learned his wife was having an affair so he killed her”), it doesn’t aid prediction to think this way. Like the earthquake, violence is one outcome of a process that started way before this man got married. If you were making a prediction of what a friend of yours might do if he lost his job, you wouldn’t say, “Oh, he’ll commit suicide” unless there were many other PINs of suicide present. You’d see the loss of his job as a single link, not the whole chain.

For an instrument of communication used so frequently, the threat is little understood, until you think about it. The parent who threatens punishment, the lawyer who threatens unspecified “further action,” the head of state who threatens war, the ex-husband who threatens murder, the child who threatens to make a scene—all are using words with the exact same intent: to cause uncertainty.

For example, as you watch two people argue, an escalation of hostility that would otherwise cause alarm causes none if it is happening between actors on stage at the theater. Conversely, behavior that is not normally threatening, such as a man’s walking up some stairs, becomes alarming when it is an uninvited audience member marching up onto that same stage. It is context that gives meaning to the few steps he takes.

Still, because most people have had little experience with death threats, and because they mistakenly believe that the death threat is inherently different from all other threats, the words usually cause undue fear. In fact, the death threat is among the threats least likely to be carried out.

Intimidations are statements of conditions to be met in order to avert a harm. For example, “I will burn this building down if I don’t get the promotion” is an intimidation, not a threat, because a condition is offered to avert the harm. With intimidations, the motive is always right in the statement and the outcome the speaker desires is clear. “Unless you apologize, I’ll kill you” (the speaker wants an apology). “If you fire me, you’ll be sorry” (the speaker wants to keep his job). These statements differ importantly from threats because they are brought into play as high-stakes manipulations. The speaker wants his conditions met—he does not want to inflict the harm. With threats, conversely, no conditions are offered, usually because the speaker sees few alternatives. Thus, threats carry more likelihood of violence than intimidations. Another tip: Threats that are end-game moves—those introduced late in a controversy—are more serious than those used early. That’s because those used early likely represent an immediate emotional response as opposed to a decision to use violence.

The proverbial extortion threat is actually an intimidation, because it contains the words if, or else, unless, or until: “If you don’t give me ten thousand dollars, I’ll tell your wife you are having an affair.” Best response: “Hold on a moment, let me get my wife on the line and you can tell her right now.” With that reaction, the threat is turned from gold to tin. If you can convince an extortionist that the harm he threatens does not worry you, you have at a minimum improved your negotiating position. In many cases, you may actually neutralize the whole matter.

Extortion is a crime of opportunity, usually committed by amateurs who tend to first try the most roundabout approach: “You know, I saw you on the Emmy’s the other night, and you’re doing so well and everything, making so much money, and I’ve had such a rough year financially, and I was thinking about how beautiful you looked in those pictures we took that time in Mexico…” Because extortion is a bit awkward for the neophyte, he wants his victim to jump in and make it easy by saying, “I’d be glad to help you out money-wise, but I wonder, could I get those photos back? I’d hate to see them become public.” Victims often try to appease the extortionist, but these efforts just allow him to retain the undeserved mantle of a decent person. I suggest that clients compel the extortionist to commit to his sleaziness, which puts him on the defensive. Don’t let him simply flirt with his lowness—make him marry it by saying those ugly words. I ask victims to repeat “I don’t understand what you’re getting at” until the extortionist states it clearly.