Did you know criminals pick their victims based on how they move?
In a 1981 study titled “Attracting Assault: Victim’s Non-Verbal Cues” researchers had violent felons watch videos of pedestrians walking down the sidewalks of busy cities. They were asked to point out who would be a likely target.
The felons quickly and easily identified potential victims with consistent results across all participants.
The popular assumption is that they’d choose their victims by race, gender, age or size, but this wasn’t the case!
Victims were selected by the way they moved. Pace, length of stride, posture and body language were the main criteria, as these “communicated awareness of the environment”. According to the researchers, criminals were “drawn to body postures and gaits that lacked wholeness”.
If “lack of wholeness” attracts criminals, does this mean wholeness attracts good people? Of course.
The full study, which goes into much more detail, can be found for free online.
Excerpted from an upcoming book by Frederick Dodson.
