Differentiating between harmless and harmful threats: What factors increase risk of violence?

Threats of violence are a relatively common phenomenon that can evoke stress and fear in their recipients; while most threats are not carried out, a portion are a precursor to acts of physical violence. Past research has preliminarily identified a handful of factors that may indicate that a threat will lead to violence yet is limited by the small number of variables and specific environments examined. This study investigated the association between 17 commonly accepted historical and dynamic risk factors, as well as threat characteristics and warning behaviours, and violence following threat within a community sample who threatened (N = 257). All investigated risk factors except insight were related to threat violence; several threat characteristics and number of warning behaviours displayed were also linked to higher likelihood of violence. These results imply that traditional violence risk assessment instruments may be helpful in threat risk evaluation when the perpetrator is known.