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Emailed Threats Less Crazy Than Snail Mail
SoyChemist writes "Psychologists at the University of Nebraska have read 300 threatening letters and 99 angry emails to members of Congress. They concluded that the authors of the electronic messages show less signs of serious mental illness, but they are more profane and disorganized. The report was published in the September issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences."
Opening and using an e-mail account requires some amount of sanity, but very little social skills.
Many really crazy people can't hold down a job. Can they really afford internet fees?
The truly paranoid probably don't trust computers.
The functional-but-unstable ones probably heard that snail-mail and faxes are taken more seriously than email. That was true back in the late '90s. I don't know if it's still true now.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
People who send angry emails are often acting on impulse without taking time to calm down. It's the long distance communication equivalent of road rage. We are insulated by distance and the transitory nature of the medium, just as when we drive, we are insulated by the fact that the other driver will not know us for more than a few minutes, and we are separated by glass and steel. As the incident happens, we are already moving on from it.
Letters require more forethought and more steps (finding envelope and stamp, going to mailbox, etc.). They require premeditation. Snail mail letters are also harder to trace and thus less likely to result in a visit from the FBI.
Someone with a real mental delusion, making real threats is obviously more likely to use snail mail when compared with the average angry constituent who just wants to let out their frustration.
The same could be said for mailing a letter. I suspect the cause may lean more towards simplicity and availability.
To sit down, find an envelope, and actually put 35 cents on the thing requires more forethought and commitment than firing off an email. It also takes at least several minutes to do, so there will be a bit more composition of thought than in an email.
Email can be a much more heat of the moment thing, as evidenced frequently by this forum. I guarantee that if replying to this thread, or even this forum required me to mail an envelope it would not have happened.
Not to mention that if you're sending a threat it would be best to do it in a way that cannot be so easily traced back to you.
Dropping off a letter in a different city is an easier method than anon proxies for most people.
I'm sure glad my Nebraska tax dollars are being spent wisely. Clearly, with the huge financial crisis the state is in, it is a priority that we research the sanity of people trolling across two different mediums.
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You have to be far more focussed to sit down, write out a letter, fold it, put it in an envelope and post it than you do to just bang out an email in a few minutes and fire it off. This leads to the obvious conclusion that most threatening emails received will be profane, angry missives from pissed-off but otherwise perfectly sane people, while most threatening letters will be written by people who are more mentally unbalanced, because they're the ones more likely to write such things with a level head, and not in a rush of blood.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
The letters and emails might have been reported by people who were more easily frightened by email than letters, i.e. the readers would report any threatening email but only very threatening letters. The authors assume that the media makes no difference in which communications are reported.
From the abstract: "[letters and emails] were randomly selected from the United States Capitol Police investigative case files and compared." [Emphasis mine]