Brian Spitzberg

Spitzberg aims to identify communication behavior patterns that lead to stalking

Brian Spitzberg’s not surprised when the police call. In many cases, they’re wanting to talk about their latest stalking case.

Spitzberg, a professor in the School of Communication at San Diego State University, has been serving as an informal consultant to the San Diego Police Strike Force on Stalking. In this role he advises the members of the unit on patterns of behavior to look for in suspects and in return he and his students obtain access to police files that aid Spitzberg in developing his theories and doing his research.

Spitzberg’s work in the area of stalking arises from what he and research partner William Cupach, Illinois State University, call the "dark side" of interpersonal communication competence. Long associated with models of and measures for communication competence in interpersonal situations, Spitzberg and Cupach have more recently turned their attention toward interpersonal relationships that have gone awry. This "dark side" research has led them to a concept they call "obsessive relational intrusion" (ORI).

While not attempting to theorize about the nature of mental obsession, Spitzberg and Cupach have been interested in discerning patterns of behavior that appear to be obsessive. What they’ve found is that the patterns associated with ORI are both recognizable and common. Specifically, their research has indicated that:

	a relatively high percentage (over 80%) of students surveyed indicated that they had experienced ORI.
	there were no gender differences: males had experienced ORI in roughly equal proportion to females.
	people who experienced ORI also tended to report that they had been victims of sexual coercion at some point.
	stalking (an extreme form of ORI) is related to drug use.
	there may be predictable patterns to stalking behavior.
	most people who engage in ORI are unlikely to admit it.

Mild forms of ORI occur when one individual pursues a relationship that another person does not desire to have, and anyone who has been jilted as a romantic partner may have engaged in these mild forms of behavior in an attempt to see if the rejection is real. More extreme forms of this behavior can turn into stalking, or deliberate attempts to intimidate and threaten someone. But, stalkers vary in their patterns of behavior, from mild forms, such as leaving anonymous notes on the victim’s car, to extreme forms, such as killing the victim’s pet. In very extreme forms, a stalker may kill or may even become a serial killer.

Asked why stalking has drawn so much public attention, Spitzberg said, "We are drawn to things that go wrong more than we are to things that go right." He added that he’s been attempting to relate his studies of stalking to his previous work on communication competence. At first, he believed that he was studying examples of incompetent communication. But, after going through the police records, he’s come to the conclusion that at least some stalking behavior is related to hyper-competence, or an ability to be manipulative or coercive.

While this research is still in its infancy, as is research on stalking generally, Spitzberg, Cupach, and their students hope to find patterns of behavior common to stalking cases and then to attempt to discern the communicative meanings behind those patterns. As they discover those patterns and meanings, they should be able to indicate strategies that can be used to counter stalking behavior and make life a lot less dangerous for many of us.

Scholar’s postscript: In 1996 we ran a feature on Spitzberg’s colleague, Wayne Beach, who was having trouble obtaining funding for his discourse analysis research. We’re happy to report that Wayne recently received $74,225 from the American Cancer Society to support his work.