Entering and leaving the tunnel of violence: Micro-sociological dynamics of emotional entrainment in violent interactions

Abstract

Evidence from close ethnographic observations, photos, videos, and interviews show that persons in violence-threatening situations experience the emotional state of confrontational tension/fear (ct/f). This emotion constitutes a barrier that makes most violence abort. Given one of several interactional patterns that allow violence to proceed past this barrier, violence is largely clumsy, imprecise, and uncontrolled. Moments of violence are often experienced as perceptual distortions in the flow of time, vision, sound, and sense of self, an altered state of violent consciousness that the author refers to by the metaphor, the tunnel of violence. The latter part of the article extrapolates the theory to consider mechanisms by which this emotional tunnel is prolonged into episodes lasting longer than a few seconds. These mechanisms include: self-entrainment in one’s own bodily rhythms; reciprocal micro-coordination between attacker and victim; audience or team entrainment. Some experienced individuals learn techniques to manipulate the emotional processes of the tunnel of violence for their own advantage. Greater awareness of micro-sociological processes hold out the prospect of heading off violence in the local situation itself.