OUTLIERS PSYCHOLOGY AND WRITING: How Place Exposes Character by Katherine Ramsland
- D. P. Lyle
- Oct 21
- 4 min read
OUTLIERS PSYCHOLOGY AND WRITING: How Place Exposes Character by Katherine Ramsland
Whether crime writing involves fiction or fact, writers might treat the location as just a way to orient readers: It took place here. However, the ways in which different people experience a place—especially the same place—can enhance your character development, tension, and pace. A wooded place might be scary to some, a birder’s paradise for others, and means of escape, or a spot for a body dump site.
Authors who use location for greater dimension can benefit from psychological concepts in geographic profiling (GP), an aspect of behavioral profiling that analyzes data from an offender’s point of view.
For example, serial strangler Roger Kibbe knew which stretch of I-5 in California offered stranded drivers few resources. He turned it into a trap. He’d troll this remote part of the interstate looking for a woman that caught his attention. Once he picked a victim, he drove ahead, parked on the side of the road, and pretended to need help. The woman usually stopped, to her peril.
Where offenders choose routes, select victims, and commit crimes reveals their habits and methods. The Monon High Bridge killer, Richard Allen, seemed comfortable on a bridge with unstable footing. Living minutes away by car, he knew the area, including who hiked there and where he could commit a crime undetected. In 2017, he arrived on foot, followed Libby German and Abby Williams onto the bridge, and ordered them “down the hill” to his hidden spot, where he killed them.
A key concept in GP is the psychological comfort zone, where offenders feel safe. Profilers try to determine what the offenders generally do in the designated area, i.e., what it means to them. If it’s outside, they might hunt, hike, or fish. If it’s in an inhabited area, they might reside, visit relatives, or work there. How would they view it in terms of predatory activity? Where in this location would victims be most vulnerable? Where can the offender take them, and how? What geographic feature might hinder the plan?
Dr. Kim Rossmo, Director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation at Texas State University, created Criminal Geographic Targeting (CGT) software based on the concept of mental maps. Different individuals have different perceptions of a location, and their approach to it (or avoidance of it) defines their mental map. Like physical maps, mental maps crystalize specific features, but they’re more personal. The places where offenders work, shop, hang out, and recreate define both their comfort zone and “crime awareness space.” They know where the opportunities are.
They also have predatory patterns. Rossmo identified four: a hunter searches in his comfort zone, a poacher travels to outlying territory, a troller is mostly opportunistic, and a trapper lures victims to a specific place. (There are also mixed types.)
Building a profile for a criminal incident—who would do this?—with GP queries focuses on distance and travel time, time of day, weather and geographical features around the body dumpsites (for murders), amount of time between incidents (if several are linked), and likely approach to the victims. GP can estimate the offender’s degree of criminal sophistication, evidence of planning, risk tolerance, and even some eccentricities.
For a series of linked crimes, investigators seek to identify the zone of jeopardy. They feed incident location data into GP software, along with relevant geographical markers from physical maps (roads, bridges, rivers, canyons, boundaries). This generates a 3-D image that shows the offenders’ approximate area of operation—where they strike most and least often. It also identifies features they might exploit or avoid.
British geographic profiler David Canter researched three components of place perception: actions, concepts and forms. “If we are to understand people's responses to places and their actions within them,” Canter says, “it is necessary to understand what (and how) they think.” The meaning of a place, he states, is defined by the action exerted, which derives from an offender’s assessment of location features: If I’m afraid to drive through a tunnel or wish to avoid toll cameras, I’ll take a longer way around. If I seek a remote area, I’ll avoid where people gather.
Criminal profilers form hypotheses about these perceptions to identify behavioral patterns and make predictions. “Our understanding of the situation,” Canter notes, “may be thought of as producing, or at least influencing, our behavior.” Profilers examine how offenders view potential escape routes, physical hindrances, and location-based reasons for their choices. For example, Dennis Rader, the BTK killer in Wichita, KS, looked for specific features associated with homes he intended to enter, including their easy access to the interstate. Kim Rossmo once noted that a series of rapes in a one-square-mile area were all committed in houses that lacked curtains.
A book that offers writers ways to integrate this psychological information is The Writer’s Guide to Active Setting by Mary Buckham. She demonstrates how to use setting to enhance characters’ emotional sense of their location. If a female character enters the zone of jeopardy, for example, she might feel vulnerable or scared; she might also feel thrilled or empowered. If she’s the killer, she’ll evaluate this area for how it facilitates or thwarts her plan.
Location can be a powerful frame for story. Use its nuances.
Thanks for reading this column. If there’s an aspect of psychology or criminology you’d like to ask me about, please send your question or suggestion.
Katherine Ramsland, PhD
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