Why De-Escalation Fails Before It Begins
The idea that you can’t properly help someone before helping yourself seems to be well understood and accepted in many aspects of life. You are told to first put on your own oxygen mask before helping those around you when a plane loses cabin pressure. You would likely be looked at with suspicion if you became a dentist but had teeth full of cavities. Your actions matter far more than your intentions in these regards. You may be gravely concerned about your fellow passengers, but if you pass out before you can help them, then their fate would be no different than if you simply abandoned them. You may be extremely competent as a dentist, but your lack of personal oral hygiene would likely cause anyone to doubt your methods simply because you don’t seem capable of keeping your own teeth healthy.
In the realm of communication and de-escalation, the concept is no different. Unfortunately, this concept appears to be largely forgotten or at least underserved within many of the professional circles whose goal it is to de-escalate emotionally heightened individuals. In my experience, both professionally and in civilian life, when conflict arises between two or more people, emotion almost always leads the conversation, even in the case of those whose job it is to de-escalate the situation. Why? Why can we not first de-escalate ourselves before we attempt to do so for others? To me, the answer seems clear. The purpose of this article is not only to show you why de-escalation fails before it begins, but also to suggest a solution to this problem.
Emotional Contagion & Its Effects
To answer the question of why de-escalation fails before it begins, it is important to first understand that we are social creatures. Our senses are finely tuned “human emotion detectors.” Our eyes take in a person’s facial expressions and body posture. Our ears dial in on specific changes in tone or volume. Even someone’s body odor can carry stress-related signals that our nose can detect.[2] We take in all these cues from one another without even realizing it most of the time. They get processed in our brains, which then do their best to approximate the other person’s emotional state before we even utter a word. This ability to approximate someone else’s emotions via our senses is often very useful. It can assist in priming your mind and body for a potential interaction with that person, whether it be relaxed and playful or emotionally escalated and stressful. The danger lies in how much our senses can then guide our actions without us taking the time to analyze them. It’s no secret that getting screamed at by an angry-looking person will send some strong signals your way, but what does your mind and body do with those signals? Often, when people are approached by or interacting with an escalated person such as that, our bodies have a tendency to match that person’s emotional escalation with our own.[9]
This phenomenon is related to the idea of emotional contagion. Without turning this into a psychology essay, suffice it to say that the deeper causal factors and implications of emotional contagion are not understood well enough to call it a law of nature. The phenomenon itself is well established. Its mechanisms and limits are more complicated. With that said, the behavioral observations that led to the concept of emotional contagion are well documented. The conclusion we can then make from those observations is that we humans are vulnerable to being affected emotionally by the outward (and sometimes involuntary) feedback of others. That conclusion is one that is well supported by evidence.[9]
Applying this claim about human behavior within the context of the communication and de-escalation landscape, a clear problem arises for those who are put in the position of de-escalator. From the start, you’re having to navigate around someone else’s emotional state. Whether they are outwardly angry, calm, anxious, or happy, this will invite a response from your body in kind. When dealing with someone who is emotionally escalated, you are likely to be primed to respond with escalation. That is natural and the fault of no one. But when we allow ourselves to become escalated and, more importantly, stay escalated, our ability to effectively influence the behavior of others toward emotional regulation becomes more limited. Why?
Perception Inhibition
When we become escalated (call it irritated, anxious, angry, afraid, etc.), the stress response of our bodies can manifest in a myriad of ways. Colloquially, we have many names for what we do in high-stress situations: see red, get tunnel vision, shut down… These all make intuitive sense as metaphors, but none are very helpful when trying to understand what is actually happening to you. I prefer to think of all of them under the umbrella of “perception inhibitors.” Essentially, when your body enters a particular stress response, it goes from observing to responding. While observation can continue during response, responses, by their nature, remove potential options that might be at your disposal. Think of it this way. If I’m standing at a crossroads in a cave with three available routes ahead of me, I have precisely five options. I can go left, right, center, stay in place, or turn around. Once I start walking down the center path, those options shrink to three: walk straight, stop walking, or turn around, as I can no longer perceive the other two paths. Stress operates on our bodies and minds in a similar way. When you are calm, decision-making pathways are more open. It is easier to see what options lie ahead of you. When you become stressed, your body responds, which then narrows your perceived options for further response.
Specifically, the literature around stress response and decision-making identifies a few key potential factors that may play into your ability to de-escalate during acute stress. Namely:
Attentional Narrowing (focusing more heavily on threatening information and less on other things).[8]
Working Memory Impairment (a reduced ability to hold several pieces of information in mind at once).[7]
Reduced Cognitive Flexibility (it becomes harder to abandon one interpretation or strategy and switch to another).[7]
Performance Degradation Under Pressure (acquired skills become harder to execute under high stress).[1]
All of these factors can play into the inhibition of our perception, which then makes it more difficult to use our communication skills and successfully influence someone toward de-escalation. Perhaps even more destructive, these factors, when in effect on our minds and bodies, can also inhibit our ability to determine whether we are in a threatening situation or not.
The BPSM & Its Implications
Before going into the explanation of why someone’s ability to determine threat level may be inhibited, I’d like to first clarify that this inhibition can be catastrophic in both directions. On one hand, if you wrongly determine that you are safe when you are, in fact, not, that has obvious repercussions for your personal safety and the safety of others. That is understandably a huge concern and why, in my opinion, many people err on the side of caution in escalated situations. On the other hand, however, perceiving threats where there might not necessarily be any can spell disaster in the de-escalation process. I’ve seen the unintended consequences of this type of threat assessment failure play out many times as a security professional, whether during my time as a bouncer in college, working armed security for a private security company (PSC), or in my current role as a corrections officer. When those of us whose job it is to de-escalate situations overreact, the situation can escalate further unnecessarily, which increases risk for all involved. At its most extreme, when we overreact, people can get hurt.
There’s a precedent for this kind of misappraisal of threat in the field of psychology as well. A useful model regarding our ability to perform under stress is the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat (BPSM).[6] According to this model, people tend toward what is called a “Challenge State” when they believe that they have the resources or ability to meet or exceed the demands of the task or situation. But when people assess that the demands exceed their available resources or abilities, people tend to enter a “Threat State.” These two states should not be seen as opposites. It is not calm vs. stressed. Both are stress responses. Both arise when a person perceives that they are engaging in a difficult situation or task. The important distinction lies in whether or not the person thinks they have the ability to handle the situation. When someone enters a Challenge State (this is difficult but I can handle it), they are more likely to be approach-oriented, more willing to engage with the tasks at hand, and more likely to perform those tasks better on average when compared to a person who has entered a Threat State (this is difficult and I can’t handle it). In a Threat State, you are more likely to be avoidance-oriented or defensive. You’re more likely to freeze, to hesitate, or to focus on personal protection rather than the task. On average, this leads to worse performance and slower stress recovery time.[3,5]
There isn’t necessarily a “right” or “wrong” state here. You could enter the Challenge State and be completely wrong about your abilities or resources. You could enter a Threat State and accurately appraise the situation as being out of your depth. The problem arises when you misappraise the situation in either direction. The answer to the question then becomes clear: Why does de-escalation fail before it begins? It fails because, in escalated situations, the stress of another can send your body signals. These signals can subtly influence your body’s automatic response, which may lead to preemptive defensiveness or stress (emotional contagion). This could push you toward a stress response that limits your perceived options. If you don’t have a strong emotional regulation and resource identification system to fall back on, you are liable to misappraise the threat level of the situation and enter a Threat State (or enter a Challenge State in a situation you have no business trying to handle alone). Once you feel that you no longer have the ability or resources to handle a situation, the odds of you effectively de-escalating anyone, including yourself, begin to stack against you. So then… What do we do about it?
The EEL & The PRL
Vulcan Security Consultants recognizes that, at the end of the day, the major issue is about perception: How do I feel? How do they feel? How do I handle this? What do I have at my disposal? Can I handle this with what I have? All those questions can be answered more or less accurately depending on the accuracy of our perception. In escalated situations, accurate perception can become challenging. We often praise people for their ability to “keep a level head” under pressure. But why do they have that ability? There’s some mystery there. Some chalk it up to experience; others, to natural temperament. There is precedent for both. Some people simply have a calm demeanor and can maintain grounded perception during stressful situations; experience and repetition are often helpful. But how do we set professionals up for success on the front end? That is why VSC has developed the Emotional Escalation Ladder (EEL) and Professional Response Ladder (PRL). When working in tandem, the two ladders assist in tracking one’s own emotional state, approximating the escalation level of others based on their behavior, identifying available resources, and deploying those resources effectively.
The EEL applies both internally (to you) and externally (to others). Internally, the goal is to identify when you are becoming escalated (moving up the ladder) so that you can first regulate yourself and then make an informed decision about whether you can handle the given task emotionally. Externally, the EEL helps you approximate where someone else may be positioned on the escalation ladder based on observations. It’s important to know the limitations. You can never truly know how someone is feeling or how escalated they are, but having an organized, methodical framework to draw upon in which you observe multiple behaviors and categorize them along a spectrum of generalized escalatory indicators is extremely useful when trying to gauge how escalated someone may be given what you see. The EEL offers that framework while remaining fluid enough to account for different personality types, coping skills, and other factors that blur the line between an agitated but otherwise regulated person and someone who might be on the verge of an outburst. The key is to observe and catalog behavior before drawing any conclusions, not to make judgments based on how you feel about a displayed behavior.
The PRL helps you identify what resources you actually have at your disposal. These resources scale in both level of authority and level of task specificity. This includes lateral moves to, say, a more experienced peer or even to someone lower on a company’s rigid chain of command who may have better rapport with a client. A major issue people run into during an attempted de-escalation is a lack of knowledge regarding what tools or resources they have to bring to bear against the task. This lack of knowledge limits that person’s perceived options and can lead to pressure. Pressure to figure it out yourself, pressure to pass the task off to the highest authority, etc. This pressure can then feed back into your own emotional escalation, which, as we’ve established, can further inhibit perceived options. Having a tool like the PRL to assist in resource identification can alleviate some of that pressure and make the decision to leverage a particular resource clearer.
Working together, the EEL and PRL are designed to assist with precisely four things: identify and regulate your own emotions, approximate someone else’s level of escalation based on multiple behavioral indicators, identify available tools and resources at your disposal, and, finally, find and apply the resource best suited for the task based on observable and reportable behavior. Using both ladders in tandem, a professional not only has a better understanding of their environment (both physical and emotional) but also a better methodology for identifying and justifying resources fit to navigate that environment.
So, the question then: Why does de-escalation fail before it begins? The answer: It fails because of inaccuracies in our perception. We may see threats when there may simply be misunderstanding. We may feel safe when we should be preparing for potential danger. We may overestimate our abilities or authority. We may feel isolated or unprepared while leaving tools and allies unidentified and unleveraged. The solution is accuracy, but accurate assessments during stressful situations don’t come naturally to most of us. That’s the problem VSC has been working to remedy. The development of the EEL and PRL as frameworks to assist in accurate assessments is the result of years of real-world experience tempered by scientific literature and wrapped tightly in the VSC philosophy of building competence and confidence rather than offering quick fixes or de-escalation scripts. VSC’s cornerstone workshop, Vulcan’s Forge, teaches professionals how to use these tools in high-stress situations, helping professionals and their companies “Build Better Armor.”
Relevant Literature
[1] Anderson, G. S., Di Nota, P. M., Metz, G. A. S., & Andersen, J. P. (2019). The impact of acute stress physiology on skilled motor performance: Implications for policing. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2501. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02501
[2] Calvi, E., Quassolo, U., Massaia, M., Scandurra, A., D’Aniello, B., & D’Amelio, P. (2020). The scent of emotions: A systematic review of human intra- and interspecific chemical communication of emotions. Brain and Behavior, 10(5), e01585. doi:10.1002/brb3.1585
[3] Hase, A., Nietschke, M., Kłoskowski, M., Szymański, K., Moore, L., Jamieson, J. P., & Behnke, M. (2025). The effects of challenge and threat states on performance outcomes: An updated review and meta-analysis of recent findings. EXCLI Journal, 24, 151–176. doi:10.17179/excli2024-7995
[4] Nitschke, J. P., & Bartz, J. A. (2023). The association between acute stress and empathy: A systematic literature review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 144, 105003. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.105003
[5] Seery, M. D. (2011). Challenge or threat? Cardiovascular indexes of resilience and vulnerability to potential stress in humans. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(7), 1603–1610. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.03.003
[6] Seery, M. D. (2013). The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat: Using the heart to measure the mind. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(9), 637–653. doi:10.1111/spc3.12052
[7] Shields, G. S., Sazma, M. A., & Yonelinas, A. P. (2016). The effects of acute stress on core executive functions: A meta-analysis and comparison with cortisol. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 68, 651–668. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.06.038
[8] Thomas, A. K., & Wulff, A. N. (2024). What the acute stress response suggests about memory. Topics in Cognitive Science, 16(4), 691–706. doi:10.1111/tops.12664
[9] Van Kleef, G. A., & Côté, S. (2022). The social effects of emotions. Annual Review of Psychology, 73, 629–658. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-020821-010855
For more information about Vulcan Security Consultants, Vulcan’s Forge, & Professional De-Escalation: