magazine issue 10 2007 / Issue 5

Exposing an Armed Criminal: What Can We Learn from Psychology and the Police?

• written by Anastassia Blechko

How vulnerable are armed criminals? Can one predict their intentions and actions just by watching them walking or standing somewhere? Psychologists and the police believe this is possible. They think this can be done by reading subtle clues in the appearance of a person. These clues can be meaningless for a novice, but are significant for a trained person.

While these tiny details can become visible for other people after an appropriate training, it is difficult to learn to suppress them. They can still be unconsciously shown by a criminal even though he is very skilled. Thus, a criminal may still unconsciously betray his or her intent by displaying cues, no matter how experienced or trained he is. So, what are these cues? In this article I will review a selection of scientific research on the issue within the field of psychology. The evidence derived from the literature is considered next in order to understand which emotional state, according to the offenders themselves, accompanies a criminal act. On top of that, the findings from experimental research on how an emotional state is being reflected in non-verbal cues and how this is recognized by other people will be presented. To conclude, the examples of applying knowledge about non-verbal cues to the security industry will be discussed.

Several studies find evidence that suggests that the act of committing a crime is associated with certain emotions. During a crime, or by preparing oneself to commit a crime, some affective processes are more likely to be present and to be reported by offenders than others, for example feelings of excitement, anxiety or anger (Cusson, 1993; Canter and Ioannou, 2004; Katz, 1988). The emotional responses of an offender to an offence are influenced by different factors including surveillance, alarms, and the consequences of the act. By merely thinking about these factors an offender can become fearful or excited, which can also change their physical behavior.

Another influential factor which can cause a change in the criminal’s emotional state is the experience of carrying a gun. Recent research conducted in England and Wales and commissioned by the Home Office shows that offenders tend to undergo different emotional states when carrying an illegal firearm (Hales, Lewis and Silverstone, 2006). Via interviews, the authors had collected offenders’ accounts of their own emotional responses when carrying a firearm. This study provides evidence that carrying an illegal firearm is associated with a range of emotions, for example feelings of safety, empowerment, and fear, which can be consciously evaluated and reported by the offender. The cognitive appraisal by an offender of such factors as presence of surveillance and possible following sanctions can, for example, induce feeling of fear of being caught. According to some criminals, the possessing of gun often activates a combination of such emotions as fear of being caught and empowering, or feeling of safety derived from the idea that no one can touch them.

Further, a large body of research shows that emotions can have effects that cannot be consciously evaluated but can still have powerful influences on someone’s appearance. Emotion has been found an influential factor for changing body language (Ekman and Friesen, 1967). Such body language may be much more difficult to hide than a weapon and can betray how a person really feels, even when the person attempts to conceal those feelings.
According to several researchers, body language (e.g. gait or changing of posture) might reflect relevant action tendencies that are closely linked with emotional states (Montepare, Goldstein, and Clausen, 1987; de Meijer, 1989; Wallbott, 1998; Hadjikhani and de Gelder, 2003). As an observer of non-verbal behavior one can obtain useful social knowledge about mood and intentions of others, from which one can make decisions concerning required actions. According to Meier-Faust (2002) human body language can be divided into two categories: structural information (e.g. facial features, body build) and kinetic information (e.g. facial expressions, gestures, body movements, or posture). Structural information can tell us about what kind of emotion a person is experiencing. Conversely, body movements and posture indicate the intensity of emotion and can physically illustrate what someone feels. This assumption is based on the early research of famous psychologist Paul Ekman who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and facial expressions. Ekman and Friesen (1969) investigated what facial expressions give away about a person. He showed that people who suppress emotional states often 'leak' the true emotion in fleeting facial micro-expressionswhich appear on the face for just 1/25th of a second. These flashes of emotions are beyond our conscious control, making them impossible to be masked. Furthermore, they can be spotted by a trained person. Contrary to what most people believed, he thus found that our facial expressions are not as controlled as we think. Even more surprising, one cannot truly play false with people by showing fake expressions, because there is always a chance that one’s face will betray oneself with inevitable and truly honest micro-expressions.