Understanding Intuition: Another Experiment
What’s the scariest thing one might encounter in the remote backcountry?
Last week, you humored me by engaging in a brief experiment and basic lesson about how our brains function when we encounter potentially dangerous situations. I hypothesized that if the danger appears clear and imminent, and there is an action we can take to readily ensure our safety, then we are more likely to pay attention to our fear response and act accordingly.
Based on the feedback I received, it seems like this hypothesis might hold some water, at least in certain scenarios. For example: In the case of driving behind a logger truck, those who experience the fear response typically choose to change lanes and get past the truck to avoid potential danger. But there are certain scenarios in which I think we are more likely to suppress that fear response, and thus wind up not acting in such a way so as to preserve our safety.
What are we intrinsically afraid of?
When I was a graduate student studying forensic psychology, a professor asked my class to determine the scariest possible thing one might encounter when camping in the remote backcountry, miles away from any trailhead or road. Many classmates, myself included, were quick to respond with all sorts of answers: a mama bear protecting her cubs, a moose, wildfire, booby traps, deadly spiders, etc.
We debated the veracity of our responses, each defending our answers with passion and gusto. But we were told that not a single one of our answers was correct.
In fact, the scariest thing one might encounter when camping in the backcountry is another human.
The Case for Fearing Humans
Running into another person when you’re so far removed from civilization and aren’t expecting company will likely make your blood run cold, in the same way that your blood is likely to run cold if you encounter a black bear on your driveway in a suburban neighborhood.
When something is out of place, and we can predict the potential danger it may cause, that built-in survival tool kit initiates our fight or flight response.1
And humans are capable of engaging in terrifying behavior, so we can easily predict the potential danger of an unexpected and unsolicited encounter. Anyone who’s ever seen Law and Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, any documentary about cults or serial killers, etc. is keenly aware of the monsters humans can become. So when another human shows up where they aren’t supposed to be, our fear response should initiate, and we should absolutely heed its warning.
However, it’s easy for us to use our critical thinking and reasoning skills to make excuses for occurrences that feel out of place, thereby suppressing our fear response; and it’s only in retrospect that we realize that the signs were all there to anticipate the danger. This seems to be particularly true when the piece that feels out of place is another person.
Consider the experience of one of my clients:
Tessa lives on the fourth floor of a four-story walk-up, and she’s just arrived home with her groceries. The front door to the building is unlocked when she arrives; Tessa rolls her eyes in frustration that her mostly elderly neighbors are so forgetful. She makes it up to the second-floor landing at the same moment the bottom of one of her bags gives out and an apple goes tumbling down the stairs.
Suddenly, she hears a voice she doesn’t recognize: “I’ve got it!” he says.
Something feels off, but she’s not quite sure what. The young man bounds up the stairs, smiling, and seems friendly enough. He offers to help Tessa carry the broken bag to her home and asks which floor she lives on. Tessa hesitates. He explains that he is staying with a friend on the fourth floor and charmingly says, “C’mon, let me be a gentleman and help you to your door.” This ribbing response eases Tessa’s mind, and she allows him to follow her to the apartment. But, instead of dropping the bag off and proceeding to the friend’s place, he pushes his way into her home and violently assaults her.
Now consider the red flags and subsequent excuses to ignore them:
The first red flag: The unlocked front door. The excuse: Elderly neighbors are forgetful.
The second red flag: The voice she doesn’t recognize makes her feel uneasy. The excuse: The disarming smile makes him seem friendly.
The third red flag: He asks which floor she lives on. While she doesn’t share the floor number, he chimes in that he’s headed up to the fourth (and top) floor and is staying with a friend. The excuse: He’s supposed to be there, and has permission to be in the building to visit his friend down the hall.
A New Hypothesis
When working as a victim advocate, one of the most common phrases I heard was something along the lines of, “I can’t believe I let this happen.” It can often be helpful to explore the experience by reflecting on the events leading up to it, in order to identity potentially missed red flags and why they were ignored. Doing so can enable the person to feel more empowered to pay attention to their instincts more readily, and have a better understanding of future interactions.
In the above scenario, Tessa first made an excuse for a red flag that was pretty minimal: an unlocked door. When we were working backwards through her experience, Tessa informed me that she easily brushed off the unlocked door because she frequently arrived home to find the building unlocked. To her knowledge, there hadn’t been any negative consequences as a result (no burglaries, no missing packages, etc.). Because she was used to finding herself in this scenario, she could quickly regulate her adrenaline and suppress the fear response.
The next red flag was a voice she didn’t recognize. Tessa reported that she felt fearful because she immediately associated the unfamiliar voice with the unlocked door. But when he appeared on the landing, smiling, she had an internal conversation where she convinced herself that she was being silly and unnecessarily overreacting. She convinced herself that he was probably harmless.
And when he asked what floor she lived on, she hesitated to respond. He recognized the hesitation, so he provided a logical explanation for why he was supposed to be in the building and where he was supposedly heading. His response was purposefully disarming her, knowing that she would be more likely to engage favorably because of the human innate need to be liked.2
Hypothesis: If the fear response is a reaction to another human, then we are more likely to suppress the discomfort and avoid taking action, likely as a result of our proclivity to save face and appear more likable.
Call to Action
Reflecting on negative experiences and the events leading up to them can help you realize when and where you might be inclined to make excuses for red flags. You can learn from these past experiences, so that next time you find yourself attempting to suppress that uneasiness you feel around a certain person or in a particular situation, you can ask yourself why you might be feeling that way. You may not be able to articulate the why, which is arguably an even more appropriate reason to trust your brain’s perception of the scenario. In most of these cases – please excuse the cliché – it’s much better to be safe than sorry.
And to be clear, it is incredibly difficult to determine when it’s most appropriate to ignore the fear response and when to act on it. Hindsight is the only real tool we have to attempt to identify patterns that may help inform future scenarios. For example, in general, it’s difficult to decide when to trust the instinct about another person, particularly when you’re simply having a conversation, because a conversation in and of itself rarely poses a real and present danger.
To that end, I’d love to hear from you (in the comments or by email) about situations in which you believe you should listen to that instinctual fear response and remove yourself from the situation, and those where you feel it’s typically safe to ignore. Have you noticed any patterns in your own experiences? Are you more inclined to play it safe or suppress the warning?
I’m really glad you’re here,
J
PS: This is my first newsletter that’s not related to college counseling3. I’m still finding my footing and I appreciate your patience as I figure this out. There’s a very real chance this will be more of a bi-monthly newsletter than a weekly newsletter (but I’ll supplement with other Narrative Musings whenever possible). We’ll get into the swing of things this summer! I genuinely want this to be fun and helpful for you, so — per the nature of this beast and in the spirit of improvement — please consider engaging by:
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In his book The Need to be Liked, clinical psychologist Dr. Robert Covin explains our desire for social acceptance stems from our ancestors. Survival required hunting and gathering, building shelter, and being ready to protect oneself. It was much easier to survive in a group, with shared responsibilities and skill sets, but the only way to be welcomed into a group was to have a unique skill, or to be liked.
I think you should always tune into that fear response, watching for flags and cues to exit. Even if it’s awkward. Even if ultimately you don’t bail. If something is off, let the Spidey Sense do its thing. Because scary shit happens in “safe” settings too.
I traveled through Europe for a month with a friend back in 2000. We were both 20, female, carrying backpacks. Waiting for a night train on the floor of a crowded station in Rome, we were suddenly targeted. A man stood over us, asking if we were American and muttering about what kind of women we were. We didn’t acknowledge him, and he said more and more vile things. We spoke Pig Latin to throw him off, but he talked endlessly about what dirty whores we were and what he was going to do to us. We were both terrified, and no matter where we moved he found/continued harassing us. Finally I begged him to leave us alone, loudly and frantically, hoping someone might notice and step in. Nope. We didn’t have phones or any idea where to turn. I tried to tell myself he was just a drunk asshole, but honestly this person *felt* dangerous. It made me sick, listening to him, his forced closeness. We’d been harassed plenty on that trip (including the time a guy ground his full boner into my hip on a packed bus and grinned when I confronted him), and this was different. So we hid out in the bathroom for over an hour, and finally snuck aboard our train. The whole night we were worried he would find us. We didn’t sleep. Odds are he was indeed just a drunk asshole, but I’ve never forgotten the feeling that this man would absolutely hurt me if he could.
I keep thinking about the poor woman in the scenario you painted… Could she have removed herself without being hurt? Or was it too late as soon as she stepped in the building? I can’t imagine anyone just running screaming at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, but what would be the ideal way to heed intuition here or in similar hypotheticals?