If a mugger presents you with two options, at knifepoint, to: a) hand over your wallet, or b) get cut, you can be sure of a few things. Firstly, they have had the foresight to purchase a knife, with the understanding that this equips them to give weight to their threat/demand and punish non-compliance and secondly they can be assured that their victim understands the benefits of complying i.e. not getting cut. If they deliver their demand in a confident and controlling manner, you can be sure that they understand the potential consequences of what they are doing and are likely to stick to the agreement they are presenting. If they are emotional, nervous and appear out of control the less likely they are to understand and conform to the terms they are using to negotiate with. A threat is basically a negotiation – you comply this happens, if you don’t this happens. The context is everything; the emotional state of the aggressor the determining factor.

I have lost count of the times, that a person I have thrown out of a club, pub or bar has promised to do something to me e.g. to come back with a weapon, with friends etc. Whilst I take all types of intimidation seriously, the ones where a person immediately tells me (or other people) of their intentions, scares me a lot less than the person who goes quietly and says nothing – but later indicates their desire to cause me harm. Delay, is a key factor in determining seriousness and intent.

When I consider these two things, context and delay, I get a good picture about a person’s intent. An emotional person who immediately makes threats or promises to hurt me, is far less of a threat than somebody who later becomes emotional and makes promises of causing harm and injury (without any alternatives e.g. if you do this or that you will avoid harm etc), especially if those promises are made privately and not publicly – though such private threats often become public before the aggressor means them to.

I have also lost count of the number of times somebody has told/promised me they would kill me – words spoken in a moment mean little to nothing – after escorting someone out of a bar or pub, moving them on from a particular location, recovering goods etc. When a threat is made in the moment e.g. you better buy me another drink or I’ll kill you, I know it contains little to no power – this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take it seriously, rather that I understand that the demand comes from a place where the person isn’t confident about achieving their goal via any other means – they feel the need to intimidate – and so make extreme demands and threats that are far beyond the alternative they are suggesting e.g. death versus a drink. Such individuals, who are motivated by fear, are often relieved and grateful, when you comply with their demands. Understanding when somebody “negotiates” from a position of weakness, should tell you a ton about being able to resolve a dispute peacefully. The person who starts with the most extreme threat, is like the person who starts the fight with a big swinging overhand right; it’s the best they’ve got, there’s nothing beyond it – they want that one thing to end the dispute.

The individual who starts with passive demands, “you should think about doing this”, that then transfers to active demands, “this is what you should do’, which then later evolve into actual threats, “if you don’t do this, this is what will happen” need to have such statements taken much more seriously, as they are the most likely to act. People who act in the heat of the moment aren’t thinking beyond the moment and if they can be made to consider the consequences of their potential actions will often end up dissuading themselves from acting. The person who builds to action over time has possibly/probably thought about these and considered them and come to a conclusion about how to avoid or mitigate them. At the same time they still have the underlying emotion of aggression, which they have continued to feed.

We refer to these situations as “Slow” and “Fast” Burn. The person who builds up with promises and threats of ever increasing intensity and degree is far more likely to act physically than the fast burning person even though the danger they pose seems more immediate – if a small amount of time and space can be created then de-escalation is definitely possible. The person who listens and ignores the alternatives to violence that are suggested and starts to increase their demands and promises is much more likely to act.