Social Information Processing

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 29th Nov 2021

In this article I want to look at the cognitive processes that are at play in incidents of spontaneous aggression and violence. This includes how social information is processed using scripts and schemas etc. Spontaneous acts of aggression/violence occur when a cue or trigger in the environment causes somebody to become aggressive; this is also sometimes referred to as reactive or affective aggression etc. The cue/trigger can be something somebody says or does, or even a look that is interpreted as a challenge or a slight etc. Spontaneous violence is different to planned or premeditated violence (sometimes referred to as...Click To Read More

Slipping

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 22nd Nov 2021

If you’ve ever watched someone work the Heavy Bag in the gym, it is easy to tell those individuals who have a competitive, rather than fitness, boxing background i.e., those who have been taught how to spar etc. It’s not about how they punch/hit, but rather about their use of head movement. Those that have been trained as “fighters” move their head before a combination, and after finishing one. Someone who is working the bag, from a fighting perspective, will understand the importance of head movement, in a way that is totally different to someone who is using the bag...Click To Read More

Body Defense

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 15th Nov 2021

One of the things that first attracted me to Krav Maga was its codification of fighting concepts and ideas. Where fighting is concerned there is very little “new” however Krav Maga brings these concepts to the fore and teaches by them. Krav Maga is less about techniques than it is about the application of these heuristics to fighting, in fact I would make the argument that the techniques are a way of communicating these ideas, rather than things to be blindly performed. In this article I want to talk about one of these ideas: “Hand Defense, Body Defense.” It’s not...Click To Read More

The Journey to Crime & Distance Decay

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 8th Nov 2021

I have written a little bit about crime journeys and the “distance decay” effect before, however in this article I want to explore it in a bit more detail. In terms of predicting crime – including violent crime – it has been found that place/location is a better predictor than offender characteristics and offender history etc. Most criminal acts happen in a few distinct places, rather than being evenly distributed across a city or urban landscape etc. This is also one of the reasons behind repeat victimization i.e., if someone has a reason to be in a place, that is...Click To Read More

Why We Need Folk Devils

Gershon Ben Keren

Mon 1st Nov 2021

Often when I am presenting solutions to violence at corporate events, someone will come up to me afterwards and ask me why I didn’t mention or talk more about the dangers that a particular a group posed e.g., why didn’t I talk about the mentally ill, the homeless, street gangs etc. The underlying question being, why didn’t I focus on the real reasons and causes of violence. There are many reasons why an individual might genuinely believe that the homeless population – for example - are the biggest danger to their safety; it may be that they had a bad...Click To Read More