How the way we walk can increase risk of being mugged

[klr]

The way people move can influence the likelihood of an attack by a stranger. The good news, though, is that altering it can reduce the chances of being targeted.

How you move gives a lot away. Maybe too much, if the wrong person is watching. We think, for instance, that the way people walk can influence the likelihood of an attack by a stranger. But we also think that their walking style can be altered to reduce the chances of being targeted.

A small number of criminals commit most of the crimes, and the crimes they commit are spread unevenly over the population: some unfortunate individuals seem to be picked out repeatedly by those intent on violent assault. Back in the 1980s, two psychologists from New York, Betty Grayson and Morris Stein, set out to find out what criminals look for in potential victims. They filmed short clips of members of the public walking along New York's streets, and then took those clips to a large East Coast prison. They showed the tapes to 53 violent inmates with convictions for crimes on strangers, ranging from assault to murder, and asked them how easy each person would be to attack.

The prisoners made very different judgements about these notional victims. Some were consistently rated as easier to attack, as an "easy rip-off". There were some expected differences, in that women were rated as easier to attack than men, on average, and older people as easier targets than the young. But even among those you’d expect to be least easy to assault, the subgroup of young men, there were some individuals who over half the prisoners rated at the top end of the "ease of assault" scale (a 1, 2 or 3, on the 10 point scale).

The researchers then asked professional dancers to analyse the clips using a system called Laban movement analysis – a system used by dancers, actors and others to describe and record human movement in detail. They rated the movements of people identified as victims as subtly less coordinated than those of non-victims.

Although Professors Grayson and Stein identified movement as the critical variable in criminals' predatory decisions, their study had the obvious flaw that their films contained lots of other potentially relevant information: the clothes the people wore, for example, or the way they held their heads. Two decades later, a research group led by Lucy Johnston of the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand, performed a more robust test of the idea.

The group used a technique called the point light walker. This is a video recording of a person made by attaching lights or reflective markers to their joints while they wear a black body suit. When played back you can see pure movement shown in the way their joints move, without being able to see any of their features or even the limbs that connect their joints.

...

continued: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2013110 ... -your-walk

[Trinity]

Can't access the link Says it's unavailable.

[FBM]

One of my friends once told me that I have a distinctive stride. Not sure if that applies here, but I remember late one night walking along the street. Some guy comes out of the shadows and starts yelling at me and posturing aggressively. I just looked at him and never broke stride. He backed down. I'm still not sure what that was all about.

It worked for me, Trinity.

[Trinity]

It worked for me, Trinity.

says it's an international site. I'll try and find it elsewhere..

[HomerJay]

I'm like a walking razor
Don't you watch my size
I'm dangerous
Said I'm dangerous

If you are a bully
Treat me good
If you are a bully, a bully
I beg you treat me good
I'm like a stepping razor
Don't you watch my size
I'm dangerous, dangerous

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I'm like a walking razor
Don't you watch my size
I'm dangerous
Said I'm dangerous

If you are a bully
Treat me good
If you are a bully, a bully
I beg you treat me good
I'm like a stepping razor
Don't you watch my size
I'm dangerous, dangerous

What Tosh!

[Tyrannical]

Walk like you are carrying a concealed weapon. Both criminals and cops recognize the distinctive style when you have a hidden pistol in your pocket. Just look up how police stop and frisk.

[JimC]

Walk like an Egyptian?

[pErvinalia]

One of my friends once told me that I have a distinctive stride. Not sure if that applies here, but I remember late one night walking along the street. Some guy comes out of the shadows and starts yelling at me and posturing aggressively. I just looked at him and never broke stride. He backed down. I'm still not sure what that was all about.

I suspect I might have the same thing. I've been in a few dicey situations and never get challenged. I also think I have a very hard looking head. Like if you punched it, you'd break your hand..

[pErvinalia]

Walk like you are carrying a concealed weapon. Both criminals and cops recognize the distinctive style when you have a hidden pistol in your pocket. Just look up how police stop and frisk.

The criminals, and possibly the cops, won't recognise it here, as we are defenceless Marxist sheep who have been stripped of our right to carry deadly weapons on our person.

[FBM]

One of my friends once told me that I have a distinctive stride. Not sure if that applies here, but I remember late one night walking along the street. Some guy comes out of the shadows and starts yelling at me and posturing aggressively. I just looked at him and never broke stride. He backed down. I'm still not sure what that was all about.

I suspect I might have the same thing. I've been in a few dicey situations and never get challenged. I also think I have a very hard looking head. Like if you punched it, you'd break your hand..

[pErvinalia]

erh meh gerd!

[FBM]

OK, maybe it wasn't the way I walk that backed him down.

[Seth]

Hm. I believe I've taken a lot of shit for saying the same thing more succinctly: Walk like a wolf, not like a sheeple.

Nice to see the science backing me up.

Now, about those apologies...

[Seth]

One of my friends once told me that I have a distinctive stride. Not sure if that applies here, but I remember late one night walking along the street. Some guy comes out of the shadows and starts yelling at me and posturing aggressively. I just looked at him and never broke stride. He backed down. I'm still not sure what that was all about.

I suspect I might have the same thing. I've been in a few dicey situations and never get challenged. I also think I have a very hard looking head. Like if you punched it, you'd break your hand..

Anybody who is stupid enough to punch anyone in the head deserves what they get. The larynx, brachial plexus, solar plexus, nuts...lots of places to strike that are much, much more effective that hitting someone in the head or the face. You know who we used to see the most in the ER after the Friday night bar fights?

The winners. They almost always had broken metacarpals and went home in casts. Sometimes surgery was required.