Criminal Minds
Mind Games

How the criminal minds of Friendly Predators lead sheep to slaughter by manipulating the prey's goodwill and naïve trust.

The charming serial killer Edmund Kemper used subtle manipulation to lure coeds hitchhiking near the University of California in the 1970's. In a prison interview, he told FBI serial killer expert John Douglas that he would pull over and ask the girl where she was going. Then, before agreeing to take her, he’d look tentatively at his watch – as though deciding if he had enough time to take her there. This made him appear to be a busy yet compassionate man not overly anxious to get her into his car – thereby dispelling doubts the girl might have had.

The endless variety of the shrewd tricks of criminal minds is shown in the many anecdotes throughout Crime-Safety-Security.com. Friendly Predators often use variations of high-pressure sales tactics. They control their body language, tone-of-voice, and verbal phrasing in order to appear “low-pressure” while they try to control you like a puppet on a string.

Research shows that most people think they are good at detecting lies, when in fact, most are not. Dr. Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco, widely considered the world's foremost authority on deception, found that supposed experts – FBI agents, police detectives, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, polygraphers, psychotherapists – are no better at detecting deception (especially of criminal minds) than by chance, like everyone else.

In “Telling Lies,” Dr. Ekman wrote, “Strangely enough, most people pay most attention to the least trustworthy sources – words and facial expressions – and so are easily misled.”

Psychopaths and "natural-born liars” are far too slippery to catch in a lie. Since there’s no reliable method of detecting lies, it’s better to simply watch the overall intent of his conversation. Is he trying to get close to you or get you alone?

Robert Greene, author of “The 48 Laws of Power,” described how predators fool victims by using selective honesty and generosity, playing dumb, controlling the options, and getting victims to “play with the cards he deals.” And the old “carrot and the stick” strategy is pulling with one hand while pushing with the other – shaming you while also offering you relief from that shame – as described below in Typecasting.

Renowned security expert Gavin de Becker, author of “The Gift of Fear,” outlined a variety of ploys used by the criminal minds of Friendly Predators to gain the prey’s trust. They’re subtly designed to fool you into ignoring your Intuition – your inborn alarm system that’s trying to warn you of something amiss. To paraphrase them:
• Forced Teaming: Slickly creating a “we” or “us” team from what is really a you-versus-him situation. For instance, he’ll flatten a tire on your parked car, hide nearby until you arrive, then just happen to come to your “rescue” saying, “How can we solve this problem?”
• Charm: One of a con man’s greatest assets is really nothing but a phony, cheap ploy – a tool to control you and suck you into his trap. Afterwards, victims often say, “But he seemed so nice.” (At first….)
• Too Many Details: Talking fast and adding unnecessary details to hide or reinforce a weak story or lure.
• Ignoring Your Objections: He just keeps talking, regardless of what you say, refusing to hear your “No.” A polite target eventually just gives in and submits to the lure. A savvy target doesn’t.
• Typecasting: He’ll imply that you’re too snobbish, bigoted, uninformed, or proud to accept his proposal. He hopes you’ll become anxious to prove him wrong by swallowing his lure.
• Loan-Sharking: Offering you help, then expecting you to “owe” him and return the favor by falling into his trap.
• Unsolicited Promise: To sway you, he’ll try to ease your doubts by “promising” something (as though that’s an ironclad guarantee). Such as, “Just let me in for one minute. That’s all, one minute. I promise.”

Another ploy is to insert elements of truth into a scam. Criminal minds interweave fact and fiction into beguiling tales.

You’ve been civilized to get along with others. When someone wants a rather small favor, your first impulse is to be nice, to help. Friendly Predators use a Pollyanna’s goodwill to trap her.

Dr. Anna Salter, author of "Predators,” has interviewed many violent felons in prisons. She wrote that she felt like a Grinch when briefing a Pollyanna psychotherapist colleague of hers about criminal minds, “You’d be lunch in a prison. They’d quickly figure out what you want to see and give it to you. You believe what you want to be true. Normal, healthy people distort reality to create a kinder, gentler world than really exists.”

James Orlando, a psychologist with Summit Psychological Associates in Akron, tells his interns to treat sex offenders like polar bears at the zoo: They're cute and cuddly, but if you fall in, they kill you. `If you just take what they give you, you will get misled down a primrose path every single time."Excerpted from The Akron Beacon Journal (OH) – 17 September 2002

CIA intelligence analysts guard against the pitfall of mirror imaging: the projection of American values, beliefs, and behavior onto enemies and rivals. As well, normal, healthy people project their own values onto the criminal minds of predators, thinking, “Oh, I don’t need to worry. Nobody wants to harm me,” without realizing how different – how demented – psychopathic criminal minds are.

We tend to see and hear what we want to see and hear. Unless something jolts us, we tend to stay on track – ignoring our intuition – and reinforce, rather than recalibrate, our expectations. Unless past experience taught us to be wary, we're socially conditioned to hope for the best while trusting a Friendly Predator.

The best way to navigate our ever-deceptive world is with an ever-skeptical attitude guided by your Intuition.

Blow away your naiveté with:
• Criminal Minds - Overview of the treacherous mindset of the predator you’re facing and what tricks might be up his sleeve.
• Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: friendly predators you'd never suspect.
• Quick Tricks: insights into sleight of hand and physical bluffs that criminal minds use to bamboozle you.
• Mind Games (YOU’RE NOW ON THIS PAGE): how master manipulators control you like a puppet on a string.
• Intuition: trusting your early-warning survival system.
• Predator Profiles: robber's, rapist's, and killer's criminal minds.
• Predatory Mind: an extraordinarily enlightening view into the heart of darkness - and how to beat him at his own game.
• Recap of Criminal Minds.
• Security Products - Overview

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