What are some other easy measures that people can take to make themselves less of a likely target?
Posture. Somewhat overlaps with ‘alertness’. Roughly speaking appearing to be high status within the subculture makes all the difference. (Where the subculture on the street does not mean looking like an upperclass rich person. Appearing like a high status uperclass rich folk is what you need to deter high status equivalents of muggings. Social games, backstabbing and aggressive business moves.)
From memory: there was a study a while ago where people convicted of mugging were asked to evaluate movies of people walking for who were the best potential victims and who weren’t. Then the choices made by the convicts were evaluated by movement experts (included dance teachers, I think) for commonalities.
Size, age, and gender mattered much less than coordination.
The only specific detail I remember is that people who moved the arm on the same side as the leg they were stepping with (rather than the arm on the other side) looked like victims.
The only specific detail I remember is that people who moved the arm on the same side as the leg they were stepping with (rather than the arm on the other side) looked like victims.
They sound like they are going to fall over and injure themselves without any help from a mugger.
Grayson, B. and Stein, M.I. (1981) Attracting Assault: Victims’ Nonverbal Cues. Journal of Communication 31 (1): 68-75.
This is probably the article I’m referring to. Unfortunately, even though it hit the popular press back in the 80s (that’s how I heard of it), I can’t find anything but the abstract online.
However, there’s a more recent study which didn’t use actual muggers, but which found somewhat similar results:
Consistent prototypes of easy and difficult to attack walkers could be
identified from each experiment. The prototypical hard to attack walker
was characterized by a longer stride length, swinging foot movement, a
larger range of arm swing, higher energy, lower constraint, a faster walk,
and a relatively heavier body weight than easy to attack walkers. They also
moved posturally, with a three-dimensional weight shift, whereas easy to
attack walkers moved gesturally, and with a predominantly lateral or forward/
back weight shift. The prototypes identified in our studies are similar
to those identified by Grayson and Stein (1981) but were developed using
a rigorous methodology that isolated the contribution of kinematic information
to perceptions of vulnerability. The characteristics associated with
low vulnerability suggest faster escape from potential attack (longer stride
length, faster walk, higher energy) or greater ability to defend oneself
(heavier body weight; higher energy).
Definition from the article: (postural motion activating the whole body or gestural motion activating only a part of the body)
Depending on what is meant by “swinging foot movement,” that could actually be either quite counterintuitive, or specific to muggers not attuned to signs of martial training. If I see someone crescent-stepping, which I would characterize as a non-swinging foot movement, that would lead me to raise my estimate of the probability that the person has studied karate or a similar art. The link didn’t work for me, so I couldn’t check if I was misunderstanding the term. The rest of the signs make sense.
(On a side note, academic prose is terrible at describing bodily movements. I’ve read it twice or thrice now and still have no idea what movements exactly the abstract is talking about besides ‘longer stride length, faster walk’.)
Posture. Somewhat overlaps with ‘alertness’. Roughly speaking appearing to be high status within the subculture makes all the difference. (Where the subculture on the street does not mean looking like an upperclass rich person. Appearing like a high status uperclass rich folk is what you need to deter high status equivalents of muggings. Social games, backstabbing and aggressive business moves.)
It’s not just posture, it’s quality of movement.
From memory: there was a study a while ago where people convicted of mugging were asked to evaluate movies of people walking for who were the best potential victims and who weren’t. Then the choices made by the convicts were evaluated by movement experts (included dance teachers, I think) for commonalities.
Size, age, and gender mattered much less than coordination.
The only specific detail I remember is that people who moved the arm on the same side as the leg they were stepping with (rather than the arm on the other side) looked like victims.
They sound like they are going to fall over and injure themselves without any help from a mugger.
Grayson, B. and Stein, M.I. (1981) Attracting Assault: Victims’ Nonverbal Cues. Journal of Communication 31 (1): 68-75.
This is probably the article I’m referring to. Unfortunately, even though it hit the popular press back in the 80s (that’s how I heard of it), I can’t find anything but the abstract online.
However, there’s a more recent study which didn’t use actual muggers, but which found somewhat similar results:
Definition from the article: (postural motion activating the whole body or gestural motion activating only a part of the body)
Depending on what is meant by “swinging foot movement,” that could actually be either quite counterintuitive, or specific to muggers not attuned to signs of martial training. If I see someone crescent-stepping, which I would characterize as a non-swinging foot movement, that would lead me to raise my estimate of the probability that the person has studied karate or a similar art. The link didn’t work for me, so I couldn’t check if I was misunderstanding the term. The rest of the signs make sense.
For those not familiar with crescent-stepping (as I was not, my own martial art being taekwondo rather than karate), the videos in http://dandjurdjevic.blogspot.com/2010/12/crescent-stepping.html seem to be representative.
(On a side note, academic prose is terrible at describing bodily movements. I’ve read it twice or thrice now and still have no idea what movements exactly the abstract is talking about besides ‘longer stride length, faster walk’.)
The url needed to be corrected. It works now, and my apologies for the inconvenience.
“Swinging foot movement” isn’t defined in the article. I’m guessing it means that the leg is allowed to move as a relatively free pendulum.