Next Class Scheduled

Threat Assessment will be offered again February 6th at 6:00p at Rowdy's Range at 200 North, 1000 East in St. George. Be sure to call to reserve a seat, 435-275-2550.

The Begging Question

There’s that obligatory angle in any live newscast from the aftermath of a mass murder; the neighbor, the classmate, the co-worker, dug up for that moment when they declare some characterization of the perpetrator. Not a single one of them ever said, “Yeah, he was my friend,” or “I used to mentor him.”

I don’t believe it has anything to do with no one wanting to be known to associate with a spree killer. Media would be all over someone who said, “I knew him really well and this totally shocked me.”

No. The reason why producers and reporters fail to find people in functional relationships with killers to speak on their behalf is because there aren’t any.

And that’s the problem.

Sociopaths are called such due to their non-social behavior, though they tend to seek out others with “group values” towards breaking social contextual rules. There is a disconnect between conscience and action, making close relationships difficult if not impossible to sustain.

Not as easy to detect are psychopaths, those incapable of empathy, but have the appearance of charm. Robert D. Hare, in his recent research and clinical practice, devised a way to diagnose psychopathy. It's a list of personality tags that may be observed.

These behaviors include manipulative charm, narcissism, amorality, parasitic living, no remorse, feigning emotion, incapacity to empathize, promiscuity, entitlement, no goal orientation, irresponsibility, pathological lying, impulsivity and the inability to sustain relationships. However, other characteristics make this individual difficult to detect.

This personality can be immediately endearing and credible, charismatic to the point of interpersonal conversion. We like this person. They appear funny, brilliant, deep, or insightful not because they are inherently, but because they know how to use their well rehearsed arsenal of lies and have no remorse in doing so.

So, on one hand is the sociopath, associated only to those of their kind, isolated to the rest, and on the other, the psychopath, morally disconnected but adept at feigning relationships. Don’t confuse this with some kind of continuum. There are a couple of more diagnoses involved. The point is, spree killers, no matter their mental illness, have no or few meaningful relationships.

For me, that begs the question; were these individuals engaged by a friend, a mentor, an enduring relationship wherein human value was sustained, would their homicidal terminus have been thwarted?

Ryan Heber, the science teacher who talked a sixteen year-old gunman into surrendering his weapon, has resisted the public spotlight, but you can bet the media have found plenty of friends to attest to his good character.

Micro Expressions

This discovery of non-verbal human tells is from Dr. Paul Eckman. It was upon his research the show Lie to Me was based.

The concept is that while we may be feeling a base emotion, we may be simultaneously masking that emoiton. Think of the powerful influence of manners, or just being nice. Eckman asserts, though, that true emotions can punch through the patina of being nice, or stoic, or feigning interest. These flashes of truth are called micro expressions because they often happen in one thirtieth of a second.

Unlike language used to express emotions, micro expressions are universal regardless the culture. In fact, Eckman's research discovered that primates and other mammals have universal signals for emotion. For humans these emotions are identified as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise disgust and contempt.

Take a look at these expressions from some of my interns:

See if you can identify them.

Chances are you went...

Happy

Sad

Surprise

Disgust

Anger

Contempt

...and you did so based on your inherent ability to identify these emotions. Most of us can. It's when these fly by you at less than half a second when this gets difficult to identify.

What can help is establishing a baseline, or a neutral, like these:

While it's tough to be completely void of emotion, like some of these students, the neutral expression is a reference for the observer to use in identifying other micro expression.

In threat assessment, of all these micro expressions, the one to be most concerned with is not anger,

...it's not disgust,

...it's this one, contempt.

Of all the micro expressions this is the only asymmetrical display. It's defining characteristic - the curled lip raised to one side, the eyes vacant in expression.

Contempt is an evacuation of conscience. When one is evaluated in contempt, their value ceases. When one is contemptuous they're above the obligation of morality, superior to their subject, perpetuated by thoughts that do not consider their subject's value. Contempt can breed vengeance, an escalated emotion common to threatening behavior.

Eye Behavior

Blinking

Blink rates can indicate escalated anxiety or controlled contempt and a range of emotions in between. Normal blink rates range from two to ten times a minute depending on relative humidity and eye moisture. Blink rates decrease when the eye is engaged in reading or watching a screen, down to 3 to 4 times a minute.

A blink rate baseline can be derived by counting blinks per minute at resting or unescalated levels. More accurate blinks rates are determined over a period of time, averaging blink rates from at least a half dozen samples.

Increased blink rates in a subject can be a result of escalated anxiety, emotion, or result from excessive eye movement. Decreased rates stem more from the alpha-male stare, the inherent decoy from being detected in a lie or escalation.

Movement

Excessive or dormant eye movement beyond an established baseline can indicate escalation.

Psychological Manifestations

When the mind is in dissonance, the body can make this manifest through various tells:

Diminishing - Gesturing becomes smaller, limited range of expression with hands and arms.

Detachment - Emotional responses are delayed, separated from their verbal expression.

Delight - Pleasure tells expressed after disclosure of trauma.

Disconnection - Expression in the eyes doesn't match expression in the mouth.

Direction - The feet tell where the body wants to go.

Physical Indicators of Escalation

The carotid artery, the main blood vessel that courses through the neck, can display a heavy and escalated heart rate. As anxiety increases, so does blood pressure and heart rate, and often this can manifest in the neck through careful observation.

Other indications of elevated blood pressure can be found in the temples. The discerning observer will look beyond upper manifestations to find a pulse rhythm in the dangling foot of a leg crossed over the other at the knee, a good point to get a pulse baseline without being intrusive.

Escalated respiratory rates can result in hypoventilation, not being able to blow off accumulated carbon dioxide. This may result in pursed lip breathing, heavy sighing, yawning.

Face touching, scratching, behind the ear and the back of neck can indicate an adrenal dump, escalation in anxiety resulting in a flight or fight response. A side effect of this is itching about the face and neck causing the target to unwittingly scratch as an adaptor.

More prevelant in women than men is the rupturing of tiny capillaries, starting in the skin of the chest and working its way up to and through the neck, the result of a pounding heart.

Attribution

This is an influence of assigning motive to action. The cigarette smoking man's action was standing with his daughter waiting for someone. He smoked while doing so. No one knows the motive, perhaps he was just enjoying a cigarette. Chris assigned the motive of "bad" to his action. I assigned the motive of "bad" to Chris' over-consumption of cookies. 

Keeping these influences in check means developing a psychological noise that recognizes the process and deals with the influences, making the evaluation more valid. Keeping our own judgements at bay is imperative when assessing what may be a threat. The temporal context permitting, the more information we gather without preconception or prejudice, the more apt we are in finding meaning in non-verbal manifestations that speak contrary to existing contexts. Remember, the idea here is to recognize and engage threatening behavior before it may escalate to violence.

The Primacy/Recency Effect

This is an influence based on first or last impressions. We don't give the benefit of the doubt that the person has somehow changed since the impression. This is an influence that plays out in the temporal context and results in the barrier of Static Evaluation.

The Implicit Personality Theory

If someone shows characteristics in some areas, it's assumed they have similar characteristics as well. For the cigarette smoking man, he was evaluated as bad because of his habit. 

Finish this sentence - People who smoke also_______________. Chances are the words to follow are as negative as the behavior of smoking. If you don't view that behavior as negative, the implication may go neutral or positive. 

If we perceive someone as witty, charming, and smart, according to the theory, we may also see them trustworthy. Assumptions are created based on a little or limited information. It's the impetus of the barrier of Allness. Ted Bundy was witty, charming and smart.

The Perceptual Process

In my story about my son at Legoland, Chris' epiphany was in his perceptual process, toward the end of it where he realized his evaluation.

The process, the way we perceive others goes through a routine like this:

1. Sensation - Gathering data through our sensory channels. 
2. Organization - Sorting data based on our own frame of reference. 
3. Interpreation - Adding meaning to the data. 
4. Evaluation - Adding value or discounting based on our added meaning of the data. 

And usually the process happens in less time than it takes to say sensation, organization, interpretation, evaluation. 

Chris, in his brand new colorful context of Legoland saw a man smoking a cigarette - sensation. He probably smelled it, as well, something foreign to him. He sorted the sensory input through his little schemata, his frame-of-reference where he makes sense of his surroundings - organization. The only criteria he had for smoking was what he had learned in church, that smoking was not only bad for you, it was a sin to boot, adding meaning to man's action of smoking a cigarette - interpretation. Then, based on the meaning, Chris judged the man - evaluation. 

It's a pretty slick process, one that protects us from the ilk and ills of the world regardless of its inherent fallibility. It works because it so easy to default to, especially when our own schemata are well-fed with a diet of extrinsic influences, instead of our own discernment. 

Static Evaluation

As teachers, it's imperative for us to be able to recognize these barriers, not only in ourselves, but in those with whom we have stewardship, our students. They both perpetuate and are victims of these barriers. We see it every day in classroom and playground behavior, those who bully and ignore, and those who are bullied and isolated. Here is our chance to step in, engage and teach how both can bring down the barriers and improve relationships.

Static evaluation is a barrier influenced by the notion that people don't change. This is subtly dangerous. Ask any parent who failed to see changes in their drug-addicted child, or the teacher who overlooked subtle tells of escalating violent behavior. 

The cure is observation and recognizing that everybody changes and are capable of change outside of expected social and cultural contexts. 

Polarization

As teachers, it's imperative for us to be able to recognize these barriers, not only in ourselves, but in those with whom we have stewardship, our students. They both perpetuate and are victims of these barriers. We see it every day in classroom and playground behavior, those who bully and ignore, and those who are bullied and isolated. Here is our chance to step in, engage and teach how both can bring down the barriers and improve relationships.

Polarization is the fallacy of either/or, a barrier of extremes. You either are or you are not. This is another easy barrier to default to because we only have to see other in one of two ways. Are you that shallow, that unsophisticated? Neither is anyone else. In education contexts it's so easy to polarize. we do it by good and bad, by straight or hood, by smart or dumb. It's atrocious.

In student circles, the polarization happens in cliques and peer groups. You're with us, or you're not, a huge influence in disconfirmation. 

The cure is to find middle ground and eliminate the false dichotomy. What do we have in common, especially when it comes to values? Stress and explore the commonality. It builds relationships. 

Intensional Orientation

As teachers, it's imperative for us to be able to recognize these barriers, not only in ourselves, but in those with whom we have stewardship, our students. They both perpetuate and are victims of these barriers. We see it every day in classroom and playground behavior, those who bully and ignore, and those who are bullied and isolated. Here is our chance to step in, engage and teach how both can bring down the barriers and improve relationships.

Intensional orientation is the tendency to view people in terms of how they're labeled or talked about instead of how they actually are. How often do we do this with students? We tell a colleague about a problem student we've had in class, orienting the colleague to them instead of allowing them to form their own evaluation of the student based on their own observations. We're all quick to do this because it's much easier to take someone else's word than it is to form an assessment on our own.

Students do this with each other. In fact, recent research on the human behavior of gossip indicates it's a survival instinct. This barrier happens on a primal level, one that seeks to preserve one's self. These labels transmit on the backbone of rumor and are just as injurious as a direct insult. 

Intensional orientation labels the student, the person and it does not allow them to prove themselves otherwise. This orientation can be both negative and positive.

The cure is to extensionalize, go to the person, not a third, to find out more about them. Pretty simple, really, and yet if we lack assertiveness, we rather default to someone else's evaluation. In threat assessment, are you going to trust someone else's label? As you evaluate threat assessment with students, how apt are you to default to existing labels? 

Disconfirmation

As teachers, it's imperative for us to be able to recognize these barriers, not only in ourselves, but in those with whom we have stewardship, our students. They both perpetuate and are victims of these barriers. We see it every day in classroom and playground behavior, those who bully and ignore, and those who are bullied and isolated. Here is our chance to step in, engage and teach how both can bring down the barriers and improve relationships.

Disconfirmation is the disregard of another. We do this to people with whom we're afraid, with whom we do not want to engage. In my story I wasn't alone. There were three lanes of cars full of people doing the same thing, exacerbating the affect of disconfirmation. 

William James noted, "No more fiendish punishment could be devised than that one would be turned loose in society and remain unnoticed by the members thereof."

Students can get pretty adept at selective disconfirmation. It's one thing to be ignored by another, only to be exacerbated to be ignored by a group, isolating and diluting identity of the one being ignored.

The cure is to drop the "dis." It's confirmation, acknowledging the presence of another both verbally and non-verbally. Confirmation one's presence is a simple as a greeting and a bump or handshake, yet it validates the presence of the other, a fundamental in developing relationships. 

Fact/Inference Confusion

As teachers, it's imperative for us to be able to recognize these barriers, not only in ourselves, but in those with whom we have stewardship, our students. They both perpetuate and are victims of these barriers. We see it every day in classroom and playground behavior, those who bully and ignore, and those who are bullied and isolated. Here is our chance to step in, engage and teach how both can bring down the barriers and improve relationships.

Fact/inference confusion is basing evaluations on assumptions. My inferences with the man in my story were the staggering and the brown paper bag, associated with a racial stereotype. The facts were that his gate was impaired by braces on his legs and the bag contained motor oil, not alcohol. Shame on me.

Shame on us when we infer a characteristic about someone based on assumption. Inference is the staple of intensional orientation. When an assumption about a student's reputation travels the gossip superhighway among peers, its influence of personal destruction seems unsurmountable. It's as carcinogenic as sexting, but much older and better entrenched. When young people feel they've failed in acceptance, or when the data around them conspires against them, hopelessness is a common default response.

The cure to this confusion is the temporal context, it's time. Observing over a period of time allows the assessor to gather more accurate data and separate assumptions from the reality of the context. The cure in student contexts is to teach avoiding assumption and stopping rumor. 

Allness

As teachers, it's imperative for us to be able to recognize these barriers, not only in ourselves, but in those with whom we have stewardship, our students. They both perpetuate and are victims of these barriers. We see it every day in classroom and playground behavior, those who bully and ignore, and those who are bullied and isolated. Here is our chance to step in, engage and teach how both can bring down the barriers and improve relationships.

Allness is when one assumes they know all there is to know about another based on limited information. This is a common barrier, one tied to values found in the cultural context and roles found in the social context. 

We do this with people who sport artifacts that might be outside of our own accepted cultural norms, like tattoos, piercings, wild hair styles, unusual clothing. We see an artifact, gather other limited data and confirm the barrier that we know all there is to know about this person. In law-enforcement this is called profiling.

Many students are driven by artifacts - clothing, shoes, hairstyles - in identifying and encouraging acceptance. If one doesn't sport the right artifact they can be or feel ostracized from their social context. 

The cure here is to remember there's always more to learn about anyone. Engage in communicating, ask questions, clarify, and never assume you've closed the book on the person. Allness is a myth, a good, relationship-building notion to pass on to our students. 

Indiscrimination

As teachers, it's imperative for us to be able to recognize these barriers, not only in ourselves, but in those with whom we have stewardship, our students. They both perpetuate and are victims of these barriers. We see it every day in classroom and playground behavior, those who bully and ignore, and those who are bullied and isolated. Here is our chance to step in, engage and teach how both can bring down the barriers and improve relationships.

Indiscrimination is when one focuses on classes of individuals and fails to see uniqueness and individuality. This is the impetus of stereotyping. As I discussed in the story of the drunk Mexican, I had a frame-of-reference on Mexican males. I'm not entirely clear where it came from, but I'll admit media has a lot to do with it. Regardless, this barrier prohibited me to see this man as anything other than a drunk Mexican due to my inability to be aware of what made him unique. Had I really observed his gate while he walked, I would've noticed the pattern of his steps as opposed to the random stumbling I thought I saw.

Students concentrating on acceptance and popularity subvert their uniqueness. Those who don't mask what makes them different often become victim of this and other barriers. 

The cure to this is consideration, a thoughtful kindness, a critical look at all the non-verbal cues apart from assuming where they come from. This enables us to see non-verbal signals for what they are instead of attributing some kind of characterization to them.

For students, developing the ability to recognize uniqueness in their peers encourages disclosure, a positive influence in building relationships. 

Psychological Noise

This is the voice or voices inside your head. It can be a noise of awareness or of emotion. It can be the noise of psychopathy and narcissism. It's here where we carry on a conversation apart from the one in which our mouths are engaged. Psychological noise can work to our advantage, kind of a sub-routine of critical analysis while the rest of our senses gather data as we engage another person in conversation. It's a skill and it takes practice. The trick here is managing our psychological noise, our thought processes, in being able to assess more objectively. We can do this by recognizing certain barriers and perceptual influences that come into play while we're engaged in threat assessment.

Semantic Noise

This is a noise of meaning. Esoteric terms like "esoteric" can cause semantic noise if we don't know the meaning of the term. Speaking a language other than the accepted language of the social and cultural context or using a vernacular apart from accepted meaning creates semantic noise.

Physical Noise

Unless you're in an anechoic chamber, you're experiencing physical noise. From traffic to your building's HVAC system, there's noise all around you. White noise is that constant background that can lull the attentive into the same numbness as familiarity with one's physical context. Physical noise can interrupt the communicative process by making messages difficult to hear or inaudible.

Psychological Context

All the afore-mentioned contexts arrive at some level of meaning along with emotion making up psychological context. This is where we can become empowered or debilitated. It's within this context where we find meaning, connection, love, fear, contempt, sadness, surprise, anger, pity, compassion.

If a subordinate is talking with a superior (social) about the subordinate's quality of work (cultural) in the superior's office (physical) on a Friday afternoon (temporal), chances are the subordinate is in a psychological context of fear.

It's within this context where decisions are made, where we fly or we fight, where we hesitate or engage.

Temporal Context

Most afternoons are tough. We're on the downside of the day, most our energy expended at this point. This is temporal. There are morning people and night owls. Pick your favorite season. The passage of time establishes a unique linear context where we communicate better or worse. Temporal habits such as eating, sleeping, showing up at work establish a pattern of behavior, some of these patterns are individual and others, like class schedules, are social.

Departures from established temporal contexts warrant attention. Absences, tardies, after hours, any shift away from established temporal baselines is out of its context.

Cultural Context

Scholars have grouped social and cultural contexts together. I believe they're better understood separated, though they are more often mutually inclusive. While societal rules, or laws, stem from a need for order and justice, cultural mores are based on values. Family, country, security, wealth, sacrifice, education, work; cultural values are found in the individual, in relationships and in expectations. Counter-cultural values are easy to identify in hindsight, like racism, violence, sexism, any -ism for that matter, but are only identifiable when their contrast to cultural norms becomes manifest. By then, for too many victims, it's too late.

Again, I'm one to advocate individuality. I'm certainly not calling for marginalizing anyone who may not share widely held social and cultural mores and values. It's when one's cultural context becomes abruptly truncated where others need to notice, be aware, be willing to engage, ask questions, and assess.

Social Context

Within the physical context we communicate based on established social contexts made up of relationships and expectations, or role and rules. The social context in a classroom establishes the relationship between the teacher and student and implies and warrants rules of communicative behavior within these roles. At a school these roles and rules are challenged daily by the resistance of authority, nonconformity, acting out.

I teach at a very conservative college in Southern Utah where I once had a student who decided to challenge the social and cultural contexts of his peers. On Halloween he showed up to class with red contact lenses in his eyes and a black t-shirt with two large white words, "Jesus Sucks." The social rift was palpable. He'd broken the rules socially to the point where I was concerned for his physical safety.

While I'm one to encourage individualism, such a dramatic social departure warrants scrutiny. It's sending some loud messages that require attention. It's important to emphasize the departure aspect of this; social behavior inconsistent with an established baseline behavior of the individual makes the social context critical to understand in threat assessment.

Physical Context

This is where communication happens and often dictates complementary contexts. If you're a teacher, for example, your classroom is the physical context wherein you reach, or try to reach shared meaning. Your office, the faculty lounge, the restroom, the administrator's office are all physical contexts that dictate communicative behavior psychologically, socially and culturally.

Most of us work within physical contexts that have become too familiar. Daily exposure to our physical contexts numbs awareness, dumbs us down through familiarity. As a result we lose awareness of closest exits, lines of sight through windows and around walls and door frames, or moveable barriers that can help secure an area. Raising awareness of the physical context is simply taking note, listening for the unfamiliar voice, realizing a new obstruction or the removal of some furniture. Manipulate someone's physical context and you're apt to create a bit of an accident, simply because we're not paying attention out of familiarity.

More than brick and mortar, the physical context induces some mores as a result of the social and cultural contexts. We may behave differently in a chapel than we do at a grocery store. When the behavior loses continuity with the physical context it becomes more noticeable. When the role of a person within a physical context is incongruent, the context becomes vulnerable.

When I visited my daughter's school to meet with her counselor I found myself down a hallway going against the current of students rushing out after the final bell. I was out of context, an adult male in a middle school hallway, and I went unnoticed.