Today's Friday • 13 mins read
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.
Violence sends out signals before it occurs. Two examples:
- Women who were attacked in their own homes later reported feeling uneasy on “that” day, but they brushed it off as stress.
- Someone described feeling a sudden choking sensation when a stranger’s perfume passed by. Later, a woman was abducted from that very subway the same night.
You still can’t explain why you acted in a certain way in a certain scenario.
- You felt hollowed out before going on a date with this one person.
- Something bothered you when they asked to meet at a certain place.
- You felt queasy when this nice person offered help without your asking.
The primitive part of our brain can sense life-threatening dangers much earlier than the rational brain can fully process the situation. These signs are gifts from the survival instinct we call fear.
7 Pre-Incident Indicators (PINs) of Violence
Violent and abusive people have patterns. Seeing these early can help you avoid hurt.
Gavin de Becker, an expert on the protection of public figures, shares seven “pre-incident indicators” (PINS) of violence in his book The Gift of Fear.
These signs indicate a predator’s malicious intentions. They come before physical aggression and violence.
Here are 7 pre-incident indicators (PINS), or warning signs that a predator plans to hurt you:
- Charm and niceness
- Forced teaming
- Loan-sharking
- Typecasting
- Discounting the “No”
- Too many details
- Unsolicited promises
1. Charm and Niceness
Predators use charm and niceness to lure you. Because you were conditioned to be friendly and polite to a nice person, they are exploiting that weakness.
But charm almost always comes with a purpose. At its core, charm has plans to grab your attention and subtly control you through allure and charisma.
Charm is a verb—a calculated act to lower your guard and disarm your stranger-mistrust.
Same with niceness. Niceness is a deliberate decision. Violators choose to act nice to groom and manipulate their targets, turning social warmth into a weapon.
You might have heard of victims sighing, “He used to be so nice.” That nice man turned into a predator some time after that initial kindness.
Watch out for niceness and charm that feel too eager or too out of place. A criminal can use charm to disable your gut intuition.
Ask yourself, “Is this person trying to charm me?” If yes, turn away every time.
N.B.: Another form of this could be feigned helplessness. Ted Bundy used to pretend he needed help. At times, he would put his arm in a sling and ask a young woman for help. As soon as they came close, he’d kidnap them.
2. Forced Teaming
The assailant says things to create a false sense of connection with the victim.
They will use the “we” language to present an urgent, shared problem or need. Like, “Both of us are trying to figure this out,” or “No need to talk outside, let’s go in,” or “We’re from the same town, wow!”
These are attempts to get you on their team and form an alliance (that does not actually exist).
Forced teaming does two things:
- One: tries to gain the trust of the victim by finding common ground;
- Two: imposes false loyalty, so the victim feels bound to be loyal to this “known” person.
Forced teaming pushes the agenda that collaboration must begin right away. It tries to trap you in a partnership you never agreed to.
Refuse all attempts at forced teaming, even if it feels rude.
If they say, “We’re in the same boat,” reply with, “No, we’re in different boats.”
3. Loan Sharking
The predator offers a series of help, favors, or gifts, most of which are unsolicited.
Undersurface, their generosity is a rising debt. They are setting up the victim to feel indebted and obliged to return the favor in some way.
That’s like what loan sharks do—lend money on very easy terms but at very high interest, ultimately using threats or violence to collect debts.
Watch out for the “unasked for” favors.
If this person is buying you things or inviting you to do fun things without asking you first, it may be more than expressing interest in you.
They are likely going to wield control over you in the future. Worse, they can get abusive to make you repay the debt that you didn’t ask for in the first place.
This is similar to the foot-in-the-door technique, which starts with a small, easy-to-agree-to request that, once complied with, is followed by increasingly larger requests.
Unsolicited offers or gifts are ominous signs. Don’t accept what you didn’t ask for.
“Thanks, but no thanks” can be your literal lifesaver.
4. Typecasting
The predator throws a mildly critical comment or insult at the victim, hoping to start a conversation. The idea is to make the victim feel challenged to prove the remark is not accurate.
For example,
- “Oh, I bet you’re too stuck-up to talk to a guy like me.”
- “There’s such a thing as being too proud, you know.”
- “You’re probably too busy to help.”
- “Too proud to accept help?”
The thing is that even the typecaster himself doesn’t believe what he says to be true. He has studied you to know that it will trigger your response.
The best response to typecasting is no response.
Do not even acknowledge the typecasting remark.
5. Discounting the Word “No”
People who won’t take your no for a no are red flags.
This person, who refuses to accept your denial, rejection, or boundaries, is a potential predator.
It signals that they are either seeking greater control over you or refusing to back out and give up their control.
Say “No,” and repeat it every time they repeat their offer or request.
The worst thing you can do when someone won’t accept your “no” is to give them weaker and weaker refusals.
Women often make the mistake of making ever-weakening refusals before finally giving in. The wife of an abusive husband shared this about how she finally gave in:
“He pursued me across three continents after I declined his marriage proposal, so I finally said yes.”
Accepting one refusal to “no” often opens a floodgate. More refusals start pouring in. From minor ones like asking you to dance, to buying you a drink, to joining you uninvited at your table, and serious things like touching you wrongly.
Negotiation is also a poor response when someone adds this to their offer: “You can’t say no.”
Don’t negotiate, don’t relent, don’t explain. Simply say, “No, I’m good,” “No, I don’t need your help,” or the plain “No.”
“‘No’ is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you.” – Gavin De Becker
6. Too Many Details
People often use “too many details” when they are lying. The idea is to create a false sense of credibility.
But truth doesn’t need to be justified so much. So, read this person’s many justifications as a ruse to deceive you later.
To be honest, they know well that what they are saying is not entirely credible. So they don’t want you to think too much about their strange offer.
The extra details are to support their lie and make you trust them.
The underlying mechanism is information overload, to confuse you and weaken your defense against doubtful claims.
Say, they invite you to a party at their home. Then add this: “Many friends from my old school are coming. My mother has overseen all the cooking and made sure each item is healthy. And she is more eager to meet you than all my friends.”
That extra information is to build false trust. It tries to show you the “genuineness” of their intentions so you don’t turn down their invitation right away.
Be alert the moment you hear extra details following an offer for you to consider.
Decline the offer until you’ve talked to other people about how safe it is.
7. The Unsolicited Promise
The basic reason behind every promise is to convince us of an intention. Promises are made when the listener has doubts.
An “unsolicited promise” is a promise to do (or not do) something when no such promise is asked for. This is a dire indication of a future offense.
When someone says, “I swear I’ll leave you alone after this” or “You have my word, I’m not going to hurt you,” they’re trying to settle your unexpressed worries.
Be certain that they are already aware of your unease and are trying to manage it in advance.
- Unsolicited promises try to create a false sense of safety. The predator says things to make the victim think the abuse won’t continue or escalate. This makes the victim lower their guard and become less likely to fight or flee. But this is the exact sign that the predator is coming with a bigger attack.
“The unsolicited promise is one of the most reliable signals (of hidden agendas) because it is nearly always of questionable motive.” — Gavin de Becker
When you receive a promise without asking for any, ask yourself, “Why does this person need to convince me?”
Start looking for an escape when a predator volunteers an unsolicited commitment.
Summary: 7 Pre-Incident Indicators (PINS)
- Charm and niceness: Used to disarm suspicion.
- Forced teaming: Creates a sense of partnership with the victim.
- Loan-sharking: Involves doing something for the victim while expecting something in return.
- Typecasting: An insult that casts the victim into a specific role to manipulate or engage them.
- Discounting the “No”: Ignoring or downplaying a refusal; inducing guilt for saying No.
- Too many details: Given out to increase the believability of their story or request.
- Unsolicited promises: Aimed at convincing the victim of good intentions.
Your Fear-Intuition Is Telling You Something
Our fear instinct is an internal alarm that warns us of imminent danger. Unfortunately, social conditioning often makes us ignore this very survival mechanism.
Timely interpreted, fear can save our lives. That’s why Gavin De Becker calls it The Gift of Fear.
He advises us, especially women, not to ignore these visceral signs that something isn’t right, even when we don’t exactly know why. Ignoring these undefined fear signals may prove fatal.
“Intuition is always right in at least two important ways: It is always in response to something. It always has your best interest at heart.”
Evolution gave us the gift of fear to detect threats that our conscious mind might miss or dismiss. Our ancestors who ran when leaves rustled, without waiting to see if it was a saber-tooth or the wind, lived.
“Real fear is a signal intended to be very brief, a mere servant of intuition. … Fear is not an emotion like sadness or happiness, either of which might last a long while. It is not a state, like anxiety. True fear is a signal that sounds only in the presence of danger.” – De Becker
Danger of Politeness: Nice vs. Good
A crucial part of personal safety is knowing the difference between being good and being nice.
We usually think that nice people don’t have bad intentions. Criminals, like psychopaths, also know this. So they use polite manners and nice behavior to disable your fear instinct.
Charm is also a put-on act for people who want to control or trap you. Don’t immediately fall for charming people and charming behavior.
Society teaches children, especially girls, to be polite to the nice behavior of others, even if it makes them uncomfortable. This very teaching can become dangerous.
“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. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive.”
- When we ask children to act politely despite feeling uncomfortable, we’re teaching them to ignore that nice behavior from others can mask danger.
- Social pressure to be polite and accommodating, particularly for women, can mute the life-saving warning signals that could save us.
Nice behavior is a red flag.
People trying to be nice might not really be nice. So, teach kids and yourself not to trust anyone who is acting nice.
The Different Fears of Men and Women
Then there’s a stark divide between how different men vs. women experience fear:
“Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect, while most women fear rape and death.”
This shows why the same behaviors might be interpreted very differently by each gender. What men may perceive as merely annoying or disappointing behavior can register as potentially life-threatening to a woman.
That’s not paranoia, but a practical risk assessment based on the lived and shared reality of women.
Breaking the Cycle of Unwanted Pursuit
De Becker offers a valuable insight for young women dealing with persistent unwanted attention:
“There’s a lesson in real-life stalking cases that young women can benefit from learning: persistence only proves persistence—it does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn’t mean you are special—it means he is troubled.”
This reframing challenges the romantic notion that relentless pursuit demonstrates devotion. Instead, it recognizes such behavior as a warning sign of someone who prioritizes their desires over another’s boundaries.
The Myth of Universal Reactions
Others won’t necessarily do what you would do in a given situation. Because they didn’t grow up with the same values and perceptions as you.
De Becker cautions us:
“Believing that others will react as we would is the single most dangerous myth of intervention.”
This holds true for predicting an assailant’s behavior as well as how bystanders may react in a potentially dangerous situation.
A possible aggressor may not play by your rules. Nor would the bystanders.
Keep that in mind when going into an unsafe situation.
How To Handle False Threats
De Becker asks us not to react to empty threats with blind fear-based reactions, like panic responses.
First, remain calm when you sense a possible threat. Then, spot the false or empty threats:
- Watch for vague details, inconsistent behavior, and situations that feel off.
- If someone overreacts or shows nervous body language, it may indicate they aren’t serious.
- Consider their past actions and why they might be making the threat; manipulative motives often mean there’s no real danger.
Trolls and bullies thrive on their victims’ fears; don’t feed them. Once you detect a false threat, refuse to give it power by panicking.
Instead, stand your ground, call their bluff, and respond with confidence.
Final Words
No matter how civilized we get, the violence will be there. But when you respect fear as a messenger that warns you of impending danger, it can keep you alive.
“You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.” – De Becker
De Becker also shares three body signs of violence:
- A jutting chin is commonly seen in violence-prone men.
- Unblinking stares indicate a potential violent outburst.
- Flaring nostrils signal imminent violence.
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Also read: 5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life: Quick Summary
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