The mind of the attacker is something that many of us will struggle to understand. What we fear is that we could be on the receiving end of an attack if we’re not careful. For anyone who wishes to intend violence or assault on another individual, it takes them seven seconds to pick out their victim. But how do you avoid becoming a target? There are certain things that you can do to help yourself and to avoid the threat or dangers that come from an attacker.The mind of the attacker is something that many of us will struggle to understand. What we fear is that we could be on the receiving end of an attack if we’re not careful. For anyone who wishes to intend violence or assault on another individual, it takes them seven seconds to pick out their victim. But how do you avoid becoming a target? There are certain things that you can do to help yourself and to avoid the threat or dangers that come from an attacker.
The Seven-Second Rule
The seven-second rule is something that was created off a case study made by two sociologists Betty Grayson and Morris I. Stein in 1981. The two conducted a famous study that helped them understand how assailants went about picking their targets. To do this, they set up a video camera that watched people walking along a busy New York sidewalk for two hours.
The videotape was then shown to inmates at a large East Coast prison who would then given the opportunity to point out who would be a target for them based on their own previous experience. These were individuals who had been incarcerated for offenses of robbery, all the way to murder. And this became the basis of the seven-second rule. However, there were some surprising results that came from that case study, and that can help us to know more about the mind of the attacker.
Picking Their Victim or Victims
The first fact to stand out from the study is the consensus over who is the easiest to overpower and control. This might be something that is based on their figure and frame or those who may seem a lot weaker mentally. For some attackers, it may be that they look at the physical aspects of a person first, and in those instances where they don’t know the person. Many attackers can also know their victims at least to some degree in order to work out whether they’re easy to overpower from a mental control point of view. The second fact from the study was one that wasn’t as commonly expected. The choices that those inmates made weren’t based solely on their gender, race, or age. For some serial offenders, they can tend to generate a MO, which modus operandi. This is the pattern that the police will often look at when trying to track down an assailant. The type of person they go for would fall under this term.
There are other criteria that an attacker would pick when it came to their decision-making. This may have been the person’s nonverbal signals, and these are perhaps basic movements that we’d not really pay much attention to ourselves when out and about. The basic movement of someone’s walk, the length of their stride, and even the way their arms swung, all play into the decision of whether you become their victim or not.
But why is that? Well, body language can be very telling about our personality and the way we feel. This is non-verbal communication and is what those inmates were referring to in regards to the study. Dr. Paul Ekman discovered 7 universal microexpressions, for example, that every human makes when it comes to feeling intense emotions. However, no every non-verbal communication is in the face, but it’s also in the rest of the body too. For example, when we cross our arms in front of our chest, for many of us, it’s a comfort and a way of feeling secure and safe. It’s why you may find that in professional situations or social occasions where it’s new for many people, some may fold their arms to help with their nerves.
It’s unnerving that you could be picked out just by how your body reacts naturally to certain situations, but knowing it could actually be good for you. When it comes to the mind of the attacker, you want to be able to know the things that are making you vulnerable. Whether it’s a sexual assault or a robbery out in public, it’s important to know what you can do to ensure you don’t become their next victim.