Situational Awareness

It's a little more complicated than that.

Generated by me, using HiDream I1 Fast.

I harp quite a bit on “situational awareness” and how it is vital to preventing dynamic social interactions, but I seem to have been somewhat negligent at explaining what “situational awareness” actually is.

This point was driven home by a on-line conversation with someone who has been following me for years, who happily informed me that they “scanned for danger all the time”.

That’s … not what situational awareness is. “Scanning for danger” means you’re looking for things that are already a threat — and only looking for active threats puts you way behind the power curve.

Situational awareness, for lack of a better term, is observing and determining what is “normal” for the area and time, and looking for things that aren’t normal. The professional term is “baseline”.

For people — and yes, situational awareness extends to things that aren’t people, too — you observe what people are (generally) wearing, what (general) mood they’re in, what (general) directions they’re moving in, and other things.

Once you have ascertained “normal”, you look for the things that aren’t “normal” — the professional term is “deviations from baseline” or “anomaly”.

As a “for instance”, I stopped at the Local QuikTrip this morning on the way to work. Baseline for the QuikTrip at 0615 hours is tradespeople cycling through, getting a quick brekkie, job site supplies, and fuel. Their emotional state is best described as “pre-caffeine”, and they’re dressed appropriately for the job site and the current (coolish) Texas weather. The actual baseline is more complex than that, but you get the drift.

The deviation to this “normal” would be the guy wearing naught but a set of hot-pink lycra bicycle shorts, doodling aimlessly in the dirt by the air-pump.

Is he a threat? No. And if all you’re looking for is threats, he doesn’t qualify.

However, he is someone you should keep an eye on.

Everyone knows what the “normal” — the baseline — for a summer beach is, right? For lack of better descriptions it’s beachwear, beach activities, and beach mood. You’ve got that pictured in your imagination — now add in a man wearing a business suit, pacing back and forth, and muttering angrily to himself.

He’s an anomaly — technically it’s three deviations (dress, emotional state, activity) — but you get the idea. He’s not a threat, but he doesn’t fit the normal for the time and place, so you should probably keep an eye on him.

While we’re on beaches, this is a good example that “normal” or baseline doesn’t just extend to people, it also extends to environments: If you’ve been at this beach for three days, and for those three days the tide comes up to here, and recedes to there — that’s a baseline. On day four, the tide goes waaaayy the hell out there … well, that’s a deviation, and you should probably keep an eye on it.

Remember that baselines — “normal” — not only change from location to location, but change in a single location throughout the day. Normal for a high school at 10am is not the same normal as 3:30PM or 9PM. The same city streetcorner can have completely different expectations of normal in the morning, and at evening.

“Ian, that’s interesting, but what am I supposed to do with this information?”

Well, that’s entirely up to you.

Personally — and this is just my SOP — I can respond to any deviation from the norm, but there are two instances that require that I respond:

1. Any single anomaly displaying three points of deviation means that I need to respond in some way. This does not mean that I won’t respond to a single point of deviation — there are instances where I most assuredly will respond to one deviation — but three points means I have to do something to alert my subconscious and body that something might be going on. And it does not mean that my response has to be dynamic or violent. Leaving the area, moving to make sure the path to any exits is clear, assuming a defensive posture are all probable responses.
   Example: A man at an outdoor concert who is dressed in too many clothes for the season (#1), Not paying attention to the concert (#2), and Flat Affect (#3). In this example I need to do something — leave the concert, take a covert defensive posture while keeping an eye on him, or anything else that trips my mental viewpoint from Relaxed to Alert.

2. Any single anomaly with one deviation that appears to be focussed on me.
   Example: The man at the beach in a business suit (#1), but he’s observing me; or someone walking against the flow of pedestrian traffic (#1) and paralleling me; or someone dressed inappropriately for the climate (#1) who shifts position to get closer to me. All of these are examples of single deviations, but since they appear to be focussed on me, they require me to react in some way. Again, a violent response probably isn’t required, but I need to do something — move away, assume a defensive posture, issue a verbal challenge, something.

Anyhoo, if this interests you, Jason A. Riley and Patrick Van Horne wrote probably the defining text on this subject — called “Left Of Bang”. If this is your bag of crisps, I heartily recommend it.

Ian