Fear is an emotion (not a feeling), and it provides us with the context for understanding what is happening in our environment. Recognizing this is key to understanding how Situational Awareness works in real-life situations. Awareness isn’t by default a conscious process; it can’t be. Consciously, we can only focus on one thing at a time – our brain in this mode can’t multi-task - and this is the very opposite of “awareness”, which requires us to be able to keep track of the many different things that may be happening in our environment. Our subconscious processes work faster than our conscious ones, so even when we think we have “consciously” recognized/picked up on a warning sign, our subconscious processes have beaten us to it – they process the information quicker than we can process it rationally, because they don’t rely on having all of the information before they move into action e.g. if you are walking through the woods and you step on something that moves (hidden beneath leaves etc.), you will probably involuntarily jump back because your subconscious fear system will take over and move you to safety; just in case what you stepped on was a snake or a piece of unstable ground that would have caused you to fall, etc. It won’t wait to identify what the precise danger/threat is (to have complete information), and may even react to something that isn’t harmful e.g. a broken branch you stepped on. What your fear system has done is given you a context, in which to understand your situation: leaving you to now rationally make sense of that situation.

When I teach people about “warning signs” that indicate somebody is planning to assault you, there is often a confusion, that I am suggesting that these are things people should be actively looking out for and trying to identify and pick up on. In certain situations, it may be the case that you do need to actively up your awareness, such as when you are walking in a bad part of town late at night (something you shouldn’t plan to do, but may be unavoidable; you may live there, for example), but for the most part we shouldn’t be walking around in a heightened state of awareness, as this will distract us from the things that we need to do on an everyday basis. We should allow our fear system to do this for us.

If I take two warning signs that can indicate the possibility of danger, such as “Target Glancing” and “Scanning”, it can be found that people will do these things for none nefarious reasons, as well as nefarious ones.

Target Glancing, involves somebody, repeatedly glancing at their target (this can be things/resources as well as people – a pickpocket looking to take a purse or wallet will not stare at it, as this would possibly draw attention to their intention, but will check it with a glance, and then looking away, repeating this process till they are ready to take it), often from different positions. Scanning, involves a person repeatedly looking around them, to check their environment – when it is done by a criminal, it may be to check for the presence of law-enforcement/security, if there are CCTV cameras around and where the blind spots may be, and to make sure their escape routes after committing the crime are clear and accessible etc. There are however a multitude of honest reasons why somebody may scan and target glance. A father out shopping with his child will scan to keep sight of them. If a person thinks they recognize somebody, but is not sure, they will probably keep glancing at them. None of these things in such a context, indicate harmful intent, however if your fear system, changes your emotional state, by adrenalizing you, these behaviors and actions, should be identified for what they are: warning signs. Your fear, has given them a context in which they should be understood. Your conscious recognition of these warning signs, haven’t alerted you to danger, they are helping you identify – and confirm - what the danger is. Fear is the context, that changes an otherwise innocent behavior, into a warning signal.

One of the ideas/concepts that I teach is the Dynamic Risk Assessment (DRA). When you are alerted to the presence of danger, within your environment, you need to make an assessment of it, and this assessment is based on the warning signals that you can pick up on – if you pick up on any, it is a “High Risk” situation, if you can’t pick up on any, it is an “Unknown Risk” situation (your fear system picked up on something, so if you can’t recognize/identify it, it remains an unknown stimuli, which you must continue to search for and investigate). There is no such thing as a “Low Risk” situation; if risk exists, it should in these situations always be categorized as “High”, that way it is never denied or discounted. If you hear loud bangs, in an office building you work in, and become adrenalized, they must be interpreted in your “new” emotional state, in the context of fear i.e. as gun shots. Unfortunately, in many active shooter/killer contexts, these warning sounds are not interpreted within the context of fear, and are explained away as somebody letting off fire-crackers, etc. If your fear system adrenalizes you, and you pick up on somebody’s footsteps behind you, they must be interpreted from your new emotional context; as a warning sign that should be investigated and evaluated, rather than as something that should simply be explained away.           

In the 1880’s, the psychologist William James, changed the way we understand fear. It used to be thought, that we saw a threat, became afraid, and then responded to it, or as in James’ analogy we’d, “see a bear, fear it and run”. James came to the conclusion, that this wasn’t the correct order of events, and that in fact we’d, “see a bear and run”, and as/because we were running we’d consequently fear the bear. Or, to put it another way, we’d understand our situation i.e. our emotional state (fear) gave us the context to understand what was happening to us. In the case of a wild bear, the danger is evident, when dealing with human predators the warning signs of a threat may be more subtle, however many of these warning signs can easily be explained away e.g. the person we identify to be walking behind/gaining on us is simply in a hurry or is trying to catch up with us because we have dropped/left something etc. Without the context of fear, this is the correct way to interpret such things, but when in a state of fear, they should be treated as warning signals – even if there is a chance that our subconscious processes have alerted us using incomplete information. We don’t have to be always actively looking for danger, but when our fear system is triggered, everything should be interpreted within this context.