In February of 2004 Malcolm Gladwell, gave an 18-minute speech on spaghetti sauce at a TED Conference that blew away the audience and then went viral on the web. We know that non-verbal communication plays a huge role in delivering a break-through performance, but what did Malcolm Gladwell do that separated him from the other speakers? It was only partly because he impressed them verbally with a well researched and thought out delivery, but can also be seen in how he ends his speech. Continue reading »
(If video does not start at 3:34 of the clip – fast forward to that time for the example discussed here)
When we want to identify the leader of a group of people that we are watching, observing adoration towards one of the members of the group is a significant indicator. Adoration is a positive sign of respect towards someone who you admire and can be done both verbally and non-verbally.
In the military we are masters of this trait, and we display indicators of adoration about every three seconds. When we refer to higher-ranking officers as “sir” or “ma’am,” we are verbally showing respect for that person, or at least to the rank they are wearing. We refer to senior ranking enlisted Marines by their rank when we greet them (Good morning Staff Sergeant.) We do this non-verbally when we greet senior officers with a salute (historically the salute was used as a way to show someone your face and therefore be not a threat to someone,) and as we walk past or stand at the position of parade rest – putting our hands behind our back (a submissive gesture and a way to show we are not a threat) when we talk to them. When we walk with those senior Marines, we walk to the left of them and stay just a step behind, only moving in front of them to hold open a door for them. Continue reading »
From Science to the Streets – The Need For Smart Decision Making
February 6, 2012 in Applying The ObservationsThe goal of Tactical Analysis is to help you make faster and smarter decisions while deployed, period. While it seems straightforward, making smarter decisions comes with some other requirements: such as being scientific, being justifiable or defensible, and able to be communicated.
The reason behavioral analysis must be scientific is so that our material has validity. While many books and a great deal of the research that exists on behavior has been challenged and reviewed, and is therefore credible, there is still a great deal of information available on human behavioral analysis that is completely baseless. The risk of this unverified material being simply assumed to be true based off of anecdotal evidence alone could lead to horrible decisions.
Creating our material from a scientific foundation leads to the next issue, the fact that you have to be able to communicate your decisions to others when observing human behavior. By providing scientific fields as the basis for each domain, we give you the verbiage you need to do exactly that. If a Marine or a police officer wants to detain someone and calls their higher headquarters saying, “I want to detain this person because I have a bad gut-feeling about this guy,” the level of confidence that you are going to instill in your superiors might not be what you had in mind. Continue reading »
“Do you have any explanation for your behavior, young man?” asked the officer.
Ender shook his head again. He didn’t know what to say, and he was afraid to reveal him out to be. I’ll take it, whatever the punishment is, he thought. Let’s get it over with.
“We’re willing to consider extenuating circumstances,” the officer said. “But I must tell you it doesn’t look good. Kicking him in the groin, kicking him repeatedly in the face and body when he was down- it sounds like you really enjoyed it.”
“I didn’t,” Ender whispered.
“Then why did you do it?”
“He had his gang there,” Ender said.
We Are Asking For Your Help – What Decisions Do You Make?
November 14, 2011 in Applying The ObservationsThe goal of Tactical Analysis or human profiling or predictive profiling – by whatever name you call it, is to speed up your decision-making process. If you can make decisions faster than your adversary, you will have him reacting to your actions, instead of the other way around. It is a pretty basic concept and discussions on John Boyd’s OODA Loop are talked about at all levels in our military and we are always searching for ways to observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA) faster than our opponents. It was in that search that combat profiling was first created – what characteristics of human behavior could Marines use to recognize threats and make decisions more quickly on the ground?
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“There is no sign of deceit itself (Ekman, 80).” There isn’t one single gesture, facial expression, behavior or action that a person can do which is a guaranteed lie indicator. Because of this fact and a number of other issues that surround successful lie detection, it can be daunting to the profiler at times to separate the liars from the honest. We can only suggest various methods to use if this is your task.
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What the Face Reveals – Justin Bieber Paternity Allegations
November 8, 2011 in Applying The Observations** Please note, the video for this post is no longer available, but we believe the text of this post is still relevant. Please e-mail us if you have more questions or need additional information on this topic: training@cp-journal.com **
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Watch the video and determine at what point you KNOW something is going to happen. The comments section will have my breakdown of the video, but add in your observations as you may see something different.
Watch the video multiple times. The goal of the video is to build your file folders for threat behavior, increasing your ability to identify these behaviors in real-time.
Establishment of these File Folders is what will allow you to become effective at Predicting threats before they occur.
When Emotions Don’t Fit the Baseline – What the Face Offers
October 13, 2011 in Applying The Observations, Assessing Individuals**Please note, the video for this post is no longer available. Please e-mail us directly if you would like more information on this post: training@cp-journal.com **
When we teach our students to read body language during our course, I often encourage students to ignore the face of the person that they are observing. Why? Because I believe that the face can deceive us more easily than what is shown below the shoulders, and focusing our observation on the body will create a more sound assessment of the meaning of the person’s gestures. Because of social demands placed on us, we often put conscious effort into controlling our face, which may help a person conceal a true emotion from others not trained to identify the discrepancies. That is the problem that most concerns me when reading body language, when it is being controlled consciously.
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*Please Note the video for this post is no longer available. Please e-mail us if you would like more information on this post: training@cp-journal.com
Watch the video and determine at what point you KNOW something is going to happen. The comments section will have my breakdown of the video, but add in your observations as you may see something different.
Watch the video multiple times. The goal of the video is to build your file folders for threat behavior, increasing your ability to identify these behaviors in real-time.
Establishment of these File Folders is what will allow you to become effective at Predicting threats before they occur.
If you are trying to find the quickest way to get punched in the face, try staring people down in a busy marketplace. That is exactly what will happen if you start employing overt observation techniques from a non-concealed observation post. Sometimes, employing these techniques can get exciting, and you will get so focused, you can become “blind” to counter surveillance. This is called “Change Blindness”. We will discuss this concept in another post. So how do you avoid the badge of shame associated when a Wal-Mart loss prevention specialist appears “out of nowhere” and asks you to leave? Or worse… when a gang banger decides your face should meet his fist.
Continue reading »
Watch the video and determine at what point you KNOW something is going to happen. The comments section will have my breakdown of the video, but add in your observations as you may see something different.
Watch the video multiple times. The goal of the video is to build your file folders for threat behavior, increasing your ability to identify these behaviors in real-time.
Establishment of these File Folders is what will allow you to become effective at Predicting threats before they occur.
Background for Video
On July 1, 2011, at around 3:16 a.m., an African-American male entered a Denny’s restaurant located in the 3700 block of Wilshire Boulevard. Posing as a customer, the suspect walked up to the front counter and placed an order with a restaurant employee. After the cashier opened the register the suspect pulled out a handgun, reached around the counter and started to pull out money and the drawer from inside the cash register. Once the cash and drawer were in his hands, the suspect ran out the front door and into a black, non-descript vehicle and drove east on Wilshire Boulevard.
I got asked a couple weeks ago why we talk about the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge during the introduction to profiling class. The student was curious to know if one of these types of knowledge is preferred over the other.
We can define tacit knowledge as knowledge that is difficult to convey to another person through either writing or verbal communication. Explicit knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge that can be articulated and usually comes in the form of manuals, procedures, processes, or how-to videos.
How do these two types of knowledge play in to profiling? To a person who may have grown up in the inner city encountering threats on a daily basis and who has a wealth of experience profiling, they may have a stronger degree of tacit knowledge. They can’t explain why they think there is a threat down this road, “they just know” that it is there. Something about an event has caused him to be alerted to a threat, likely due to a similar experience in his past. This can also be a place where police and law enforcement officers find themselves. After spending years on the street building their file folders for criminal activity, they become experts at identifying criminals. Despite his inability to communicate why he feels the way that he does, everyone in that patrol is probably going to heed his warning.
When it comes to survival and identifying threats left of bang, regardless of a person’s ability to communicate why they believe a threat is present, I definitely encourage you to acknowledge the warning. The problem occurs if you take any lethal action towards someone during that encounter. This applies to law enforcement personnel just as much as it applies to Marines in a combat zone. Eventually, someone higher up in the chain of command is going to ask why you took the action you did. If you have the explicit knowledge of profiling and can explain exactly why you did what you did, you will be more likely to receive the support of the chain of command. I wouldn’t always expect the same acceptance from your command if your answer to the question of why you shot that person is along the lines of, “he looked shady” or, “I had a bad feeling about that guy.”
Again, if it is a life or death situation, I would much rather you take the action to protect yourself regardless of your ability to verbalize the “why.” But, whenever possible, I encourage you to practice using the profiling domain terms so that you can improve on your ability to effectively communicate your decisions. This capability should be put onto your list of milestones as you develop and continue in your pursuit to become an expert predictive profiler.
Thoughts? Let me know.
Earlier, PVH discussed what a baseline was, and how to establish one. His suggestion was to observe and establish patterns. Jason Riley later defined how we use the domains to establish patterns.
This article builds off of both articles, but I will discuss a different technique to establish a baseline.
In order for this method to be effective, the observer must have a good understanding of each domain. This will allow the observer to constantly analyze the information he is receiving. To prevent “information overload” we must be methodical in our approach. Here’s how.
As you enter your area of observation, quickly perform a scan for any immediate threats. In this case, anything that can cause harm to you, anyone else, or your mission. Look for weapons, aggressive posturing, or anyone observing you. Start close and finish far. This is important, because the closer a threat is, the less reaction time you are given. As a result, threats that are closer to you are usually a higher priority.
Now you are prepared to start establishing a baseline.
First, take your environment, and strip away all human factors. Look at every single object, as a fact. A park bench, a tree, a sidewalk, a light post, etc. Once you have an understanding of the geographical layout of your environment, you can start making assumptions. Assumptions are the expected human behaviors, or environmental factors. For example: Continue reading »
How The Police Benefit From Behavioral Analysis – Communicating the Domains
September 7, 2011 in Applying The ObservationsI have an incredible amount of respect for our country’s police officers. In the military, when we deploy, we go overseas knowing that in 6,7,12, or 15 months down the line, we get to come home. We have to keep our game face on for a set amount of time, focus on hunting down the enemy, and then we come home. It struck me the last time we were working with LAPD that they don’t have an end date when they can flip the switch off. Every day at work, for them, is game day. For the entire length of their career, they are home.
Working the same neighborhoods for years at a time gives the police an incredible advantage. They know the streets just as good as the criminals who work them. They know who the bad guys are and they know who they need to focus their efforts on. The problem is, even when they catch a criminal, there is the chance that they get off and don’t get convicted. If the judge throws out any evidence or the jury doubts anything the prosecution presented, the criminal walks. That’s got to be frustrating. Continue reading »
