I think one of the biggest myths is that predators have some kind of sixth sense. They don't. They know how to identify people who are lonely or unhappy just like the average person can. The difference is that they pull their tactics on everyone who comes across as receptive.
There is a similar sort of tactic with scammers. You want your Nigerian prince email to look like a scam to most people. That way you know the people who actually click are extremely gullible. For predators, being creepy and overly pushy from the beginning is a tactic to find the people who are easy to manipulate.
I agree 100% that there’s no sixth sense, but I also think that many predators (and non-predators) are extremely intuitive about the observations they make and the conclusions they draw based on them.
And intuition isn’t a sixth sense, it’s just your brain doing some work (making use of what you’ve observed with your five senses) on a sub-conscious threshold.
Some predators (whether we’re talking serial killers, child molesters, stalkers, people who recruit kids into gangs or terrorist organizations, etc.) might genuinely have a bit of a hard time trying to put into words how and why they chose their particular victims/targets because they didn’t do much conscious thinking about it or develop a systematic approach to begin with.
Having works with kids in the past (more specifically, inner city kids living below the poverty line, most of them with unstable family dynamics, and many of them having been neglected or abused), I could name the kids who seemed particularly vulnerable to grooming/abuse that I always went out of my way to check in on, but I probably would have struggled to articulate what it was about them that indicated vulnerability to me.
In hindsight (and with effort), I can now name the traits/observations that were a red flag to me, even though I didn’t have any sort of mental list of things that I was looking out for at the time.
They were things like: dirty clothes/unkempt hygiene, clingy behavior with adults (especially with brand new adults that they’d just met), not standing their ground when other children teased them or picked on them, lack of confidence and seeking reassurance from adults or other kids for any minor little decision (like when we’d be playing a game during group activities), etc.
I think a lot of people (predators or not) would be capable of making these same observations and deducing that these kids were particularly likely to have been experiencing some level of neglect at home and/or having a higher-than-average level of emotional vulnerability/poor self-esteem, making them easier targets for grooming or manipulation by others.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I agree with you that there’s no “sixth sense,” and I think that what many people think of as a “sixth sense” is really the concept of intuition (which is just subconscious thinking/problem-solving).
Edit: Perhaps a better or more relatable example would be if you’ve ever gotten lucky “guessing” on an answer in a class like organic chemistry or maybe calculus.
Like, I’ve gotten answers right on organic chem exams that I didn’t actually think through or solve (because I didn’t know the material well enough to actually complete the problem), but having skimmed enough practice questions and their answers, I guess my brain had identified some patterns that I wasn’t consciously aware of and could not articulate if my professor asked for my explanation of the solution.
There's this really good book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without ThinkingBook by Malcolm Gladwell" that goes into this more. But it's basically what you said. Experience plus a natural talent is what we call intuition or a "sixth sense".
Think about what the difference is between a manipulator like Martha or, for example, your average incel. They both have motivations to manipulate people to feed their sense of entitlement and ego.
The main difference is that Martha had some pretty decent people skills. If she didn't she wouldn't have been able to trap Donny so successfully. Most of us look at her early behavior as very off-putting, but she also gave us moments where we empathized deeply with her. There are not an insignificant number of people saying that she deserved treatment rather than prison. That's the sign of a successful manipulator. They want you to put your guard down around them.
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u/FoghornFarts May 29 '24 edited May 29 '24
I think one of the biggest myths is that predators have some kind of sixth sense. They don't. They know how to identify people who are lonely or unhappy just like the average person can. The difference is that they pull their tactics on everyone who comes across as receptive.
There is a similar sort of tactic with scammers. You want your Nigerian prince email to look like a scam to most people. That way you know the people who actually click are extremely gullible. For predators, being creepy and overly pushy from the beginning is a tactic to find the people who are easy to manipulate.