The warning behaviors of Anders Breivik.

Abstract

The conflicting reports and diagnoses presented by forensic psychiatrists at the trial of Anders Breivik did not address the threat posed by him prior to his crimes, that is, the warning behaviors that were evident that may have indicated accelerating patterns of risk during the period prior to his attacks on July 22, 2011. In this case study, the authors analyze his activities and mental state through the lens of 8 warning behaviors that may indicate proximal and dynamic patterns of risk for targeted violence: pathway, fixation, identification, novel aggression, energy burst, leakage, last resort, and directly communicated threats. Breivik was positive for 6 of these warning behaviors. Although such superordinate patterns have yet to be shown to predict targeted violence, and may be very difficult "signals" to detect amid the "noise" of other cases, they may prove more useful in the threat assessment of such targeted or intended violence toward others than the accuracy of psychiatric diagnosis, whether a personality disorder or a mental illness; the latter is most germane to the threat management of the case. Such warning behaviors, although etiologically nonspecific, are discussed in the context of current attempts to validate these dynamic patterns of concern to threat assessors.

Some TRAP-18 indicators discriminate between terrorist attackers and other subjects of national security concern.

“…It is usually preceded by a triggering event, which is an historical or anticipated loss in love or work. 7 In previous studies using the TRAP-18, last resort was evident in 28% of the terrorists (Meloy & Gill, 2016) and 100% of the European terrorists (Meloy, Habermeyer, et al, 2015) without any comparison groups.…”

“…It may have many motivations, but probably the most common is a failure to have planned in advance the amount of time needed to complete all the details for carrying out the attack. Some lone actor terrorists have even noted their fatigue at having to work so long and hard as the date of their attack approached (Meloy, Habermeyer, et al, 2015). Although calibration of energy burst is difficult, and has not yet been done quantitatively, it appears to robustly discriminate between the groups, and is likely to occur in the hours, days, or weeks before the attack.…”

Visualizing the relationship among indicators for lone actor terrorist attacks: Multidimensional scaling and the TRAP‐18

“…The instrument has been shown to have excellent interrater reliability (Challacombe & Lucas, 2018;Meloy, Roshdi,, et al, 2015) and criterion validity on samples of individual terrorists and autonomous terrorist cells (Meloy & Gill, 2016;Meloy, Roshdi, et al, 2015). Its growing construct validity has been extended through its operational usefulness in the retrospective analysis of a number of individual cases of lone actor terrorism (Bockler, Hoffmann, & Meloy, 2017;Bockler, Hoffmann, & Zick, 2015;Erlandsson & Meloy, 2018;Meloy & Genzman, 2016;Meloy, Habermeyer, & Guldimann, 2015). The warning behaviorsthe first eight indicators in the TRAP-18have been shown to have discriminant validity with medium to large effect sizes in separating school attackers from other subjects of concern with no intent to attack (Meloy, Hoffmann, Roshdi, & Guldimann, 2014), and the TRAP-18 in toto was successful in postdicting violence with 76% accuracy within a sample of Sovereign Citizens, an extreme right wing group in the US (Challacombe & Lucas, 2018).…”

Public Figure Attacks in the United States, 1995–2015

“…They and their colleagues have argued that it is the movement from thought to action, analyzed through the lens of a functional and behavioral approach, which is the key to prevention of targeted violence (Borum et al, ; Fein & Vossekuil, , ). We would add that analysis at the level of symptoms, if present, and their relationship to a motivation to be violent, such as a persecutory delusion which mandates an attack against a particular target, is much more salient to threat assessment than quibbling about diagnosis (Meloy, Habermeyer & Guldimann, ). This position is largely supported by a meta‐analysis of the relationship between psychosis and violence conducted by Douglas, Guy & Hart ().…”