Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Current Sociology
entrainment in violent
interactions
Randall Collins
University of Pennsylvania, USA
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.
Keywords
Confrontational tension/fear, micro-sociology, violence
Corresponding author:
Randall Collins, Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia PA
19104-6299, USA.
Email: collinsr@sas.upenn.edu
Introduction
There are many different kinds of physical violence, but they all must go through a cru-
cial micro-sociological moment when an attacker confronts a target. The theory of con-
frontational tension, outlined here, provides a common denominator affecting whether
threatened violence will be carried out or not, and with what degree of success. We will
examine a small number of micro-interactional pathways and mechanisms that affect
these situational processes and outcomes; different combinations of mechanisms explain
key aspects of different types of violence.
My focus on micro-interactional mechanisms at the moment that violence threatens
aims to fill a gap in theoretical explanations of violence. Most theories deal with struc-
tural properties of social location, or biographical conditions in the background of vio-
lent individuals, neglecting the situational dynamics of violence itself. My approach is
closer to an opportunity theory of crime (Felson, 1994), but with emphasis on the micro-
situational dynamics of violent confrontation; and covering not only crime but all kinds
of violence including legitimate violence by police or military. In some aspects, my
micro-situational theory is related to the emphasis on network location in the geometrical
theory of Black (1998), Cooney (1998) and others with its concern for social distance or
closeness to the several sides of a conflict; here again I add a micro-processual compo-
nent. The micro-interactional theory does not explain all aspects of violence; it comple-
ments other theories of long-term motivational patterns of individuals, and the
organizational and institutional structures affecting the initiation and control of large-
scale violence. Conversely, I argue that even macro-organizational theories need a link
to what happens at the sticking point; even in big organizations like armies or police
forces, micro-contingencies make a crucial difference in actual events.
In what follows, I draw on a variety of data sources. Since I am concerned with what
actually happens in violent situations, I analyze the interactional process among all per-
sons present on the scene in as minute detail as possible, relying heavily on photos and
videos; on ethnographic observations (carried out by myself, my students, as well as in
published sources); secondary sources are also drawn upon, especially interviews with
individuals experienced in violence, including criminals, police, soldiers, domestic abus-
ers, and also interviews with victims. My theory examines violent persons on both sides
of the law, holding that their different moral or professional outlooks do not obviate the
basic micro-situational processes. My analysis often refers to serious violence carried
out with firearms, but unarmed and lightly armed conflicts are subject to much the same
interactional problems of micro-interactional tension.
To begin, let us examine an actual incident of violence in order to point up the differ-
ence between the micro-interactional approach and conventional explanations in terms
of motivations.
and killed him with one shot (Associated Press reports; Wikipedia/BART Police Shooting
of Oscar Grant). The incident began with reports that groups of young black men were
fighting on the train; at the train station, four police began making arrests. There was
much loud shouting on both sides, arguments about who was or was not involved in the
fighting. The officer who fired the gun said afterwards that he thought he was reaching
for his Taser – a device that shoots an electric charge to subdue a resisting suspect – but
pulled out his pistol by mistake. The killing received wide publicity, as many people
recorded it on their mobile phone cameras; it gave rise to large protests as a case of
racially motivated police behavior.
The easy cultural script is for us to interpret this incident as an instance of racism.
Nevertheless, for reasons I will explain, cultural factors like racism are never a sufficient
explanation of violence; most people who are racists are not good at committing vio-
lence. They need a conducive situation; and if those situational conditions are present, it
can produce the violence without the racism, or any other cultural motivation.
On that train platform in Oakland, there was a high level of emotion for many minutes
before the shooting. The young men argued and struggled with police officers; one of the
four cops, not the officer who did the shooting, was particularly aggressive, throwing
black youths against the walls, pushing them down, and yelling the word ‘nigger’ at
them. The officer who eventually shot his pistol was relatively restrained, trying to calm
both the excited cop and the men being arrested; one photo of him, a minute before the
shooting, shows a perplexed expression on his face. Micro-sociologically, the shooting
officer was not acting as a detached individual; he was influenced by the emotional mood
of the entire scene, and especially of his aggressive – and quite possibly racist –
colleague. Given the general pattern (which I will document below) that individuals in
violent situations are highly emotional, tense, and imprecise with their violence, it is
quite plausible that the officer mistook his gun for his Taser; he seemed genuinely sur-
prised when the shot was fired. Hypothetically, police training should make an officer
automatically select the right weapon; but this supposes an idealized picture of what
police behavior is intended to be, rather than what actually occurs. Our concept of vio-
lence as a deliberate, conscious decision by an independent individual, gives a very dis-
torted picture of its dynamics. In the dynamics of this situation, the colleague of the
shooting officer – the aggressive police officer – was most responsible for escalating the
situation to the point of deadly violence. The entire sequence – the holiday atmosphere,
the group fighting on the train, followed by the loud struggle between the black men and
the police at the station, surrounded by an attentive crowd – generated the emotional situ-
ation that culminated in the killing.
beats per minute, as cortisol and adrenaline flood the body; at these levels, fine motor
coordination is lost, and people cannot easily control their fingers, hands, or feet
(Grossman, 2004). Some people freeze up, and are unable to move at all; others go into
a frenzy of throwing fists or kicks, which may or may not hit their intended target. People
with weapons at close range are surprisingly inaccurate; for both cops and criminals,
gangs and soldiers, far more bullets are fired than hit the target, and 50% of the bullets
can miss an enemy less than two meters away (Glenn, 2000; Holmes, 1985; Marshall,
1947; reanalysis in Collins, 2008: 43–70).
Micro-sociological evidence shows that violence is difficult, not easy. This is particu-
larly difficult when it is face-to-face, literally two antagonists looking each other in full-
channel social communication.1 If one surveys instances of hostile confrontations, the
most typical pattern is that the confrontation does not rise to the level of actual violence,
but stops at bluster, threat, angry insults, and eventually winding down by mutual with-
drawal. Violence comes up against a barrier of confrontational tension and fear. For vio-
lence to happen, there must be situational conditions which allow at least one side to
circumvent the barrier. This does not mean that once past the barrier, tension disappears;
high levels of physiological arousal and perceptual distortion remain, which explains why
fighters typically fire so many shots and miss with so many of them. Contrary to our popu-
lar images of violence as something easy for people to do, violent threats most of the time
abort – they do not get past the barrier; and when they do pass the barrier, violence is
mostly incompetent, not hitting its target, or often hitting the wrong target, innocent
bystanders or even members of one’s own side, so-called friendly fire. In short: violence
is emotionally difficult to carry out, and having a motivation is not enough.
This is why most of our theories about violence are very weak predictors of what will
actually happen in a conflictual situation. Being a racist is not sufficient to make some-
one violent; nor is being poor, subaltern, shamed, hopeless, angry, or filled with religious
fervor. It does not matter how angry or alienated someone is; they still have to get past
the barrier of confrontational tension. Anger mostly produces verbal threats, especially
when conversing with one’s own supporters about a distant enemy.
I call this emotional condition confrontational tension and fear (ct/f) because that is
the expression on the faces of people at the moment of violence, in videos and photos;
anger may have been expressed moments earlier but disappears when the violence actu-
ally looms. Is this because people are afraid of being hurt? That is a common-sense
explanation, but in fact most people are rather good at accepting pain (as in medical situ-
ations); and the kinds of situations in which fighters show the most tension are not those
which are statistically the most dangerous; for instance, distant artillery fire causes far
more casualties than close-up bayonet charges, but soldiers are much more squeamish
about the prospect of sticking someone with a bayonet, especially if one does it to their
face; and most knife killings are done by stabbing in the back. The psychologist Dave
Grossman (1995, 2004), citing this evidence, argues that humans are more afraid of kill-
ing someone else than of being killed.
In micro-detail, what humans have greatest trouble with is a violent confrontation with
another human being when they can see each other’s eyes and face, communicating each
other’s humanity. In contrast to Grossman, I put the emphasis on the process of confronta-
tion rather than on fear of killing. In my work Interaction Ritual Chains (Collins, 2004), the
micro-sociology of normal, peaceful interactions, the basic pattern is: when persons are
physically nearby, recognize that each other is attending to the same thing, and share a
similar emotion, a process is set off that builds rhythmic entrainment. Mutual focus of
attention plus emotional contagion generates intersubjectivity, which is both mental but
also – especially importantly in this context –bodily, physiological. Mutual entrainment,
when it proceeds to relatively high levels, is a version of Durkheim’s collective efferves-
cence. We can measure the degree of micro-coordination of participants by voice rhythms,
body movements, and emotional expressions; once past a threshold, feedback loops inten-
sify the mutual focus and shared emotion, generating feelings of solidarity, morality, and
emotional energy.
A conflictual confrontation also has the ingredients of an interaction ritual: close bod-
ily presence; mutual focus – since violent threat makes everyone intensely aware of each
other; and a shared emotion of anger or hostility. But it adds one other feature: conflict is
action at cross-purposes, each side trying to impose their dominance on the other, both
trying to establish the rhythm that the other will give in to. Violence is an attempt to
establish micro-situational dominance in a tightly shared situation; and this is what gen-
erates the confrontational tension. Violence is so difficult because it goes against our
propensity to attune our nervous systems to those with whom we establish intersubjectiv-
ity. Quite literally, persons in a conflictual situation, who are close enough to send and
receive signals from each other’s face and body, feel the tension of simultaneously
becoming highly attuned to each other, while trying to force the other to submit to one’s
will. Tensions arising from tight mutual focus at cross-purposes explain why conflict
tends to be so emotional, and why violence often gets out of control, not just when lethal
weapons are used, but also in milder kinds of violence. Thus Grossman’s argument, that
tension arises from fear of killing another person, does not go far enough; the tension
arises from a pervasive micro-interactional source, even when killing is not intended.
This micro-sociological dynamic provides the key to explaining not just why violent
situations often abort, and why violence is generally incompetent, but also what factors
make violence successful – that is to say, who wins and loses, and how much damage
they do.
minutes; surveillance videos show that most armed robberies take less than 60 seconds
(Levine et al., 2011; Sanders, 1994; Jooyoung Lee, personal communication regarding
University of Pennsylvania research on surveillance videos). Much of this short-tunnel
violence is impulsive and unskilled; fighters have barely made it into the mouth of the
tunnel, where they aim their blows or shots under high tension and then are precipitated
back out of the tunnel by the emotional tension.
Medium-length tunnels (lasting up to an hour or more): More extended tunnels of
violence depend on stronger mechanisms which enable perpetrators to keep up their
action, overcoming ct/f or transmuting it into repetitive violence. Medium-length tunnels
include rampage killings such as massacres in schools and workplaces; also certain types
of drawn-out violence such as bullying and repeatedly humiliating a hapless victim, and
the kind of domestic violence that I have called a domestic torture regime (Collins, 2008:
141–147). Also in medium-length tunnels are kinds of group violence carried out for
excitement and fun, such as football hooligan violence and flash mobs (a recent phenom-
enon in the US where a group of youths, notifying each other by electronic communica-
tion devices, converge on a downtown shopping street or gathering place and randomly
attack pedestrians or ransack stores).
Long tunnels of violence (several days, possibly weeks): These include killing sprees,
where a small number of persons (usually a duo) travel about breaking into houses, rob-
bing, raping, and murdering for several days (Katz, 1988). Riots typically go on up to
three days; in instances where what is perceived as a single riot goes on longer, the vio-
lence moves to a difference venue, with different persons taking part (Collins, 2008: 248).
At the outer limit of emotional tunnels of violence are genocides; for instance the 1994
genocide in Rwanda lasted 11 weeks (Straus, 2006).
Beyond this time period, the emotional mechanism that I have called the tunnel of
violence is superseded by other mechanisms. Some genocides, where there is a strong
component of state organization and direction, can go on much longer than days or
weeks, but these extremely long processes of sustained violence are outside my model of
violence shaped by immediate, situational emotional mechanisms. Genocides covering
years must involve a great deal of emotional variation, with long periods of routine and
emotional callousness. Similarly, regimes of prolonged torture with large numbers of
victims must have different micro-sociological mechanisms (as well as different macro-
organizational contexts) than short, sudden episodes of torture. My metaphor of the tun-
nel of violence is no longer useful for highly institutionalized forms of long-term
violence; in these very long processes, the perpetrators have come out of whatever emo-
tional tunnels they were in at the outset, and now carry on violence under the pressures
of large-scale social organization.
It appears that this kind of sustained laughter only occurs in rampage killings when there
are at least two attackers (although I have not systematically investigated all the available
cases in regard to this detail) (see also Newman et al., 2004). Laughter is a good example
of a self-entraining process, and thus may be regarded as an especially powerful self-
sustaining interaction ritual (more detail and references in Collins, 2004: 65–66); it exem-
plifies what I mean by saying that a prolonged tunnel of violence is based on a mechanism
of self-entrainment.
during the escalation into violence. What determines variations in how long this arousal
persists needs further analysis. My hypothesis is that social/interactional mechanisms and
subjective loops of self-interaction can prolong this physiological arousal. Alternatively,
the adrenaline/cortisol arousal may subside, but the behavioral pattern of violent attack
continues on, as a kind of momentum imparted initially by physiology and taken up by
social/interactional mechanisms that I have described as various types of entrainment.
Self-entrainment in one’s own rhythms (mechanism A) and reciprocal micro-coordination
between attacker and victim (mechanism B) appear to be characteristic of medium-length
tunnels of violence. Self-entrainment is the shorter-lasting mechanism. Individuals come
down from an adrenaline/cortisol rush within an hour or less;6 and it is their self-absorption
in their own pounding heart, flailing limbs and repeated use of weapons, or involuntary
laughter, that is the repetitive feedback loop that keeps them in the tunnel, and so out of
touch with their surroundings. Reciprocal micro-coordination (mechanism B) goes on
longer because perpetrators need not be in a self-enclosed frenzy; their victim’s behavior is
a larger part of the feedback system. Thus bullies/humiliators are calmer than purely self-
entrainment types of violent persons, having learned to provoke their victim into the behav-
ior that makes it easy for them to renew their emotional high by tormenting the victim
again (Weenink, 2001).
Turning now to mechanism (C), I suggest it is especially important in long tunnels
(over a few hours, up through days or weeks); but mechanism (C) may also be involved
in shorter tunnels when combined with other mechanisms.
becomes bored with it, the fight quickly ends (Collins, 2008: 203–204).7 The exception
is where the number of attackers is relatively large; here the attitude of the surrounding
crowd does not matter, since the fighters constitute a big enough audience for them-
selves. This might be referred to as team entrainment: the members of the attacking
force circulate emotional signals among themselves, amplifying their polarization
against the enemy, and egging each other on to keep up the attack. I suggested at the
outset that the Oakland cop who shot a prone man in the back of the head was reacting
more to the agitation of his police partner than to the behavior of the victim.
Comparisons show that the more police officers are called to a chase or standoff, the
more likely police violence is to happen, the arrested person being beaten or shot
(Collins, 2008: 129; Worden, 1996). The mechanism of team entrainment produces
more violence, on both sides of the law. This appears to be the same mechanism in
prolonged crime sprees, usually carried out by pairs or small groups of perpetrators. In
contrast, work rampages (where a disgruntled employee or former employee returns to
attack the workplace) are usually carried out by a solo individual; their tunnel of vio-
lence is usually fairly short, on the order of minutes, rarely as long as an hour. Such
violence lacks support both from audience and from a team.
killing themselves or being killed by the police; and murderous crime sprees typically
end with the death of the marauders (Katz, 1988; Newman et al., 2004). They enter into
their spree and make no effort to bring it to an end. This is not necessarily a matter of
suicidal intention at the outset, but may emerge as the spree goes along.8 The mecha-
nisms that cause this kind of perpetual self-entrainment in the tunnel of violence are not
well-understood. The physiological arousal of adrenaline and cortisol will eventually
come back down to normal, but some other kinds of social and cognitive/subjective
mechanisms can prolong violence.
Conclusion
To recapitulate the key points: Most conflicts do not escalate to violence because they
cannot circumvent the barrier of ct/f. Some situational circumstances precipitate vio-
lence, but the tunnel is usually short, a few minutes or less, because the high level of
emotional/physiological rush makes fighters incompetent, disoriented, and uncomforta-
ble, and precipitates them back out again as soon as they can find a way to escape. Some
circumstances produce a medium-length tunnel of violence, up to an hour or more; here
the violence is prolonged by the mechanisms of self-entrainment in one’s own rhythms;
by reciprocal entrainment between the attacker who imposes the rhythm and the victim
that follows it; or by entrainment between audience/team and violent actor. For relatively
long tunnels of violence – those lasting for hours or days – the physiological mechanisms
must be prolonged or taken over by social interactional mechanisms, including subjec-
tive feedback loops of consciousness and emotion, that keep up the emotional engross-
ment and the altered state of consciousness, long past the point at which the adrenaline/
cortisol rush would normally subside. I have raised the question – as yet unanswered – as
to why some perpetrators stay in the tunnel of violence until their own death brings it to
an end, while most perpetrators eventually come down from their emotion and return to
normal consciousness.
I will add two points. First, there are some individuals who manipulate the tunnel of
violence for their own advantage. They are sophisticates of violent situations; they rec-
ognize that adrenaline rush will occur, that there will be perceptual distortions, that they
will experience a state of altered consciousness. They become experts at stepping into
and out of the tunnel of violence, under their own conscious control. Professional enforc-
ers for organized crime – those whose job is to intimidate persons who owe money or
otherwise try to evade control by a criminal enterprise – often deliberately practice a
ferocious demeanor; they do this not in order to be out of control, in the zone of ferocious
violence, but precisely for the opposite purpose, to scare the victim but keep him/her
alive and functioning for the organization (Collins, 2008: 435–436). Bully gangs who
specialize in humiliating their victims at length enjoy their activity, talk and laugh about
it among themselves, and plan their forays in the tunnel as deliberate episodes of recrea-
tion (Weenink, 2011). Similarly, members of police SWAT teams, some specially trained
soldiers, and other official specialists in violence cultivate their ability to perform inside
the tunnel of violence (Collins, 2008: 381–409; King, 2005; Klinger, 2004). Their vio-
lence is not necessarily cold and emotionless, but it is instrumental; such sophisticates of
violence operate on a meta-level of consciousness, recognizing the emotional forces of
the tunnel and adjusting to them for calculated purposes. Clearly, such sophisticates are
operating in an entirely different fashion from those who enter the tunnel with no exit.
Finally, I would urge a program of micro-sociological research on the subjective phe-
nomenology, and the detailed emotional and physical expressions, of persons in these
various kinds of violent experience. We need data from interviews and other methods on
people who have taken part in these various kinds of violence – the different pathways
around ct/f , the different length tunnels of violence – as to their experience of their own
physiology and sensory perception. Do they all experience the pounding heart beat that
makes motor coordination so difficult? What kinds of sensations, if any, do they feel in
their bodies? How much distortion of sounds, how much slowing down or speeding up
of time, how much visual blur or visual clarity? Are there different patterns for persons
in very short tunnels, compared to those in medium, long, and no-exit tunnels? My dis-
cussion above implies that for the longer tunnels, the extremely intense physiological
rush and perceptual distortions, characteristic of impulse, short-tunnel violence, are miti-
gated in some ways for longer tunnels.
A key role here may be internal dialogue. Researchers (Archer, 2003; Collins, 2004;
Wiley, 1994) have now made some progress in methods of collecting and analyzing self-
talk – utterances that go through people’s minds as they talk to themselves.9 Highly
competent users of violence – some police, snipers, hitmen – use internal dialogue to
guide themselves through violent situations (Artwohl and Christensen, 1997; Klinger,
2004). These are the individuals who appear to have the greatest amount of sophisticated
meta-consciousness of the pressures of violent situations and how they themselves can
best perform in them. We know less about internal dialogue for persons whose violence
is shaped by other mechanisms. Does all internal dialogue blank out for them? If so, this
would unpack another dimension of the often-reported experience of being in an altered
state of consciousness, since inner dialogue is a key feature of normal conscious life. Do
they go ‘on autopilot,’ feeling they are merely going through a rhythm that takes them
over? Police officers and soldiers often say ‘my training took over,’ i.e. they did what
they had learned to do as an unconscious habit, without verbally thinking about it. But
also, violent persons could go ‘on autopilot’ in a negative sense, simply feeling out of
control, pushed around by forces internal or external to their own bodies and
consciousness.
We would also like to know this for victims of violence, those who are dominated by
others: do they blank out their internal dialogue, into a generalized passivity? Does the
freezing up of bodily movements that characterizes many victims of extreme violence
extend to mentally freezing up as well? Yet another possibility is that some violent indi-
viduals have a runaway interior dialogue; at the extreme, they hear voices that they do not
own as their own (part of the clinical definition of psychosis).10 But it may be that the
chaos of external impressions is matched by a chaos of internal voices – one way to per-
form incompetently in a violent situation is to be overwhelmed by an incoherent internal
dialogue. These conjectures are for the most part very hypothetical; there is no good evi-
dence that the stereotyped ‘raving lunatic’ produces much violence, and I have argued as
to why persons who are severely mentally ill would be unlikely to have the micro-interac-
tional sensitivity that is one of the bases of performing violence competently (Collins,
2008: 187–189). On the whole, I am inclined to expect that lack of internal dialogue goes
along with the stronger processes of entrainment, and that only those sophisticates who
use meta-consciousness to instrumentally manipulate violent situations have much inter-
nal dialogue.
Finally, what is the value of penetrating deeply into these micro-mechanisms, to the
level not only of emotions but physiology, and the details of their time-dynamics? Such a
research program is an important step for testing the theory of violence as a set of pathways
around confrontational tension/fear. Since the process of violence, and its triggering-off,
involves both the perpetrator’s own ct/f, and their target’s, we need to pay close attention to
the micro-details of persons on all sides of a threatening episode – not just the person who
retrospectively becomes called the perpetrator, but also the victim or loser, as well as audi-
ence and bystanders. Such comprehensive data from real-life violent episodes are becom-
ing increasingly available, with new techniques such as mobile phone cameras and CCTV
surveillance cameras (an example is the research of Levine et al., 2011).
Examining the micro-sociology of participants in situations where violence threatens
also promises important payoffs on the applied level. From micro-interactional ethnog-
raphies, we know that threatened violence often aborts; even in military situations, stand-
off is more common than attack. This means that the triggering mechanisms for escalating
violence – in terms of my theory, finding pathways around ct/f – are crucial for violence
or for heading it off, in each immediate local situation. Self-awareness of emotional
mechanisms and feedback loops opens up the possibility of human actors controlling
their emotional mechanisms, and thus their violence. For example, Klusemann (2010)
showed by analysis of videos how the tipping point to a massacre came about in the
ethnic cleansing wars in former Yugoslavia in 1995. More widespread awareness of the
micro-sociological mechanisms that allow or that prevent violence are literally a matter
of life of war or peace, potentially under the conscious control of participants in the local
situation. In this respect, where most theories of violence are pessimistic – pointing to
long-term patterns of life-course, social inequality, or cultural grievance – micro-socio-
logical theory of violence is optimistic. The macro-conditions leading to violence are
relatively intractable, and our chances of changing them in the foreseeable future are
dim. But whatever the grievances or structural tendencies toward violence, all potential
violence must pass through the eye of the needle which is situational ct/f. Situation by
situation, violence can be avoided. Conscious awareness of how to promote this is what
the micro-situational theory of violence can provide.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. As evidence, violence is easiest to carry out when the attacker cannot see the eyes or face of
the victim. Armed robbers prefer to perform a hold-up from behind, and become tense when
victim and robber stare in each other’s faces; Mafia hitmen specialize in shooting their vic-
tim suddenly in the back of the head (Collins, 2008: 430–440). German special police units
executing Jews in Poland during the Holocaust were most successful when their victims were
lying face down to be shot in the back of the head, and were most likely to shirk in their killing
duties when they could see the victim’s face (Browning, 1992). Violence in prisons and in
police raids is higher when either the attackers or the victims wear hoods over their head,
thereby hiding their human expressiveness (Grossman, 1995).
2. Distant and clandestine violence are action-sequences extending further back in time than the
immediate micro-situation; they are often institutionalized tactics, planned and set in motion
by formal organizations. But these tactics have been chosen and institutionalized because
they solve the micro-sociological obstacle of ct/f. The macro-sociological organization of
violence is responsive to the micro-sociology of the Schwerpunkt.
3. Some analysts (Barchas and Mendoza, 1984) have referred to this type of linkage as ‘socio-
physiology,’ to emphasize the role of social interaction among persons in triggering physi-
ological mechanisms.
4. I am invoking a symbolic interactionist theory of the inner self as social, in which the key
activity of consciousness is comprised of thought, internalized dialogue. See Collins (2004:
183–220) and Wiley (1994). The subjective experience of consciousness also involves inter-
nalized emotions coming from social interactions, reshaped and amplified in various ways
through interaction among the various parts of the self; this is an aspect of the sociological
theory of the self that needs more close study.
5. Earlier, I began by dividing different kinds of violence into four main pathways around the
barrier of confrontational tension/fear. Two of these types (pathway number 1: finding a weak
victim) and (pathway number 2: orienting to a supporting audience) now come into play with
my present examination of the micro-mechanisms that sustain emotional impetus for tunnels
of various length. (A: self-entrainment) and (B: reciprocal micro-coordination) are both com-
ponents of (pathway number 1: finding a weak victim); (C: audience or team entrainment) is
an explication on the micro-level of (pathway number 2: orienting to a supporting audience).
6. This is a rough estimate from observations of violent situations; the actual length is subject to
variation with other conditions yet to be spelled out. See Mazur (2005).
7. This is based on my analysis of 89 incidents of unarmed fights, observed by myself and my
students. A hypothesis arising from the above is that the audience support mechanism pro-
duces tunnels of violence that are more easily, or more abruptly, truncated than other types
of violence. The violence depends largely on an external mechanism, much less dependent
on internal physiological and emotional feedback loops with the violent actors. On the other
hand, if the audience favors violence, it can keep it going for a longer time in the absence of
strong internal emotional mechanisms.
8. In this respect murderous sprees have a different mechanism than serial killers; the latter
usually kill one victim at a time, with long intervals between; and serial killers usually have
a well-controlled normal identity, which they use as their cover during the intervals between
killings, and as a tactical device for approaching their victims (Hickey, 2002). For this reason,
I hesitate to include serial killers as operating through the mechanisms of the various tunnels
of violence. Their explanation must lie elsewhere.
9. There is scattered information of self-talk during episodes of violence (Collins, 2008: 435),
but as yet there are no systematic comparisons among different scenarios and types of
violence.
10. Wiley (1994) theorizes mental health and strong self-agency as the ability to use internal
dialogue to maintain one’s own plan of action against external pressures and unwelcome emo-
tions alike; and mental illness as impairment of internal dialogue.
References
Archer MS (2003) Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Artwohl A and Christensen LW (1997) Deadly Force Encounters. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press.
Barchas PR and Mendoza SP (1984) Social Cohesion: Essays Toward a Sociophysiological
Perspective. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Black D (1998) The Social Structure of Right and Wrong. San Diego: Academic Press.
Browning CR (1992) Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in
Poland. New York: HarperCollins.
Caputo P (1977) A Rumor of War. New York: Ballantine Books.
Collins R (2004) Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Collins R (2008) Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Cooney M (1998) Warriors and Peacemakers: How Third Parties Shape Violence. New York:
New York University Press.
Cribb R (1990) The Indonesian Killings of 1965: Studies from Java and Bali. Clayton, Vic,
Australia: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies.
Felson M (1994) Crime and Everyday Life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Glenn RW (2000) Reading Athena’s Dance Card: Men against Fire in Vietnam. Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press.
Grossman D (1995) On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.
Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
Grossman D (2004) On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Combat in War and
Peace. Belleville, IL: PPTC Research Publications.
Hickey EW (2002) Serial Murderers and their Victims. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Holmes R (1985) Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle. New York: Free Press.
Katz J (1988) Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions of Doing Evil. New York: Basic
Books.
King A (2005) The word of command: Communication and cohesion in the military. Armed
Forces and Society 32: 1–20.
Klinger D (2004) Into the Kill Zone: A Cop’s Eye View of Deadly Force. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Klusemann S (2010) Micro-situational antecedents of violent atrocity. Sociological Forum 25:
272–295.
Levine M, Taylor PJ and Best R (2011) Third parties, violence, and conflict resolution: The role
of group size and collective action in the microregulation of violence. Psychological Science
22(3): 406–412.
Marshall SLA (1947) Men Against Fire. The Problem of Battle Command. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press. (Orig. pub: New York: William Morrow.)
Mazur A (2005) Biosociology of Dominance and Deference. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield.
Newman KS, Fox C, Harding D et al. (2004) Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings.
New York: Basic Books.
Sanders WB (1994) Gangbangs and Drive-Bys. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Straus S (2006) The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Ithaca, NY and
London: Cornell University Press.
Weenink D (2011) Exploring the violent interaction rituals of public youth violence. In: American
Sociological Association Annual Meeting.
Westermeyer J (1973) On the epidemicity of amok violence. Archives of General Psychiatry 28:
873–876.
Wiley N (1994) The Semiotic Self. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wilkinson DL (2003) Guns, Violence and Identity among African American and Latino Youth.
New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing.
Worden RE (1996) The causes of police brutality: Theory and evidence on police use of force. In:
Geller WA and Toch H (eds) Police Violence: Understanding and Controlling Police Abuse of
Force. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wright RT and Decker S (1994) Burglars on the Job. Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University
Press.
Author biography
Randall Collins is Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
He was President of the American Sociological Association, 2010-2011. Previously he has taught
at the University of Virginia, University of California Riverside, University of Chicago, Harvard,
and Cambridge University where he was Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions.
Among his books are Macro-History: Essays in Sociology of the Long Run (Stanford University
Press, 1999), The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (Harvard
University Press, 1998), Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton University Press, 2004), and
Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton University Press, 2008). His blog, The
Sociological Eye, is at: sociological-eye.blogspot.com/
Résumé
Des éléments d’observations ethnographiques précises, de photos, de vidéos et d’interviews
montrent que les personnes qui sont dans des situations de menaces violentes éprouvent
un état émotionnel de tension conflictuelle/peur (ct/f). Cette émotion constitue une
barrière qui stoppe la plupart de la violence. Étant donné l’un des modèles d’interaction
qui permettent à la violence de dépasser cette barrière, la violence est en grande partie
désorganisée, imprécise et incontrôlée. Des moments de violence sont souvent ressentis
comme troubles de la perception du temps, de la vision, des sons et de soi-même, un état
altéré de conscience violente auquel je fais référence par la métaphore de ‘tunnel de violence’.
La deuxième partie de l’article extrapole sur la théorie pour considérer les mécanismes par
lesquels le tunnel émotionnel est prolongé en épisodes de plus de quelques secondes. Ces
mécanismes incluent l’auto-entraînement dans les propres rythmes du corps, une micro-
coordination réciproque entre l’agresseur et la victime, l’entraînement de l’assistance ou
du groupe. Quelques personnes expérimentées apprennent des techniques pour manipuler
les processus émotionnels du tunnel de la violence à leur propre avantage. Une plus grande
conscience des processus microsociologiques donne l’espoir d’une possibilité de détourner
la violence au niveau de la situation locale même.
Mots-clés
Violence, tension confrontationnelle/peur, microsociologie
Resumen
La evidencia de observaciones etnográficas detalladas, fotos, vídeos y entrevistas indican
que las personas en situaciones de amenaza violenta experimentan un estado emocional
detensión/temor antagónico (ct/f del inglés confrontational tension/fear). Esta emoción
constituye una barrera que hace abandonar la mayor parte de la violencia. Dándose uno
de los diferentes patrones de interacción que permiten que la violencia continúe pasada
esta barrera, la violencia se convierte en algo torpe, impreciso y descontrolado. Los
momentos de violencia se experimentan con frecuencia como distorsiones perceptivas
en el flujo del tiempo, visión, sonido y la noción de uno mismo en un estado alterado de
conciencia violenta al que yo me refiero a través de la metáfora: el túnel de la violencia.
La última parte del estudio extrapola la teoría con el fin de considerar los mecanismos
por lo que este túnel emocional se prolonga en episodios que duran más de unos pocos
segundos. Estos mecanismos incluyen la auto-captura de los ritmos corporales de la
persona, la micro-coordinación recíproca entre el atacador y la víctima; y la captura
del público o del equipo. Algunas personas con experiencia aprenden técnicas para
manipular los procesos emocionales del túnel de violencia para su propio beneficio.
Una mayor consciencia de los procesos micro-sociológicos proporciona la posibilidad
de desviar la violencia en la propia situación local.
Palabras clave
Violencia, tensión/temor de confrontación, micro-sociología