There are terms used in the privacy/security research community: "icky" and "hinky". These are deliberately infantile terms because they describe innocent, visceral reactions to situations or events.
"Icky" is (usually) a reaction to something invasive, either physically, emotionally or (which is more my speciality) relating to data, observation, surveillance etc. Something feels icky if - either at the time or afterwards - a person feels something in an interaction or situation was wrong, that something happened without consent. Usually, we say something was icky when we can't quite describe what that something was or exactly how consent was circumvented. It's a visceral reaction to non-consensual circumstance or event which we can't necessarily quite explain.
"Hinky" is the behaviour of someone who does not seem to be up to any good. Your man here with his tickling 'game' was acting hinky. Again, we might not quite be able to put our finger on what constitutes hinkiness or how one person was being hinky and another not, but we tend to know it when we see it. Well-trained security personnel are trained to recognise and control their reaction to hinky behaviour so that they can act appropriately in a given situation. To be clear: this is training to recognise a gut reaction to something not-quite-definable, process it in context and evaluate potential responses.
What I'm saying is that there are some very serious people in academia and the various very serious security industries who take these ideas very seriously indeed. Since we can't brief people on every possible type of hinky behaviour or every kind of ick, we teach people to first recognise that their gut feelings are worth paying attention to and second how to process those feelings appropriately to craft a response. Should a response be confrontational? Should it be protective? Should it be dismissive? Should it be fast or safe? Should it escalate or de-escalate the situation? Should a police officer be strolling over to have a quiet word or should she be pulling a taser?
In your example, there are a number of 'correct' responses depending on whether the goal is the immediate protection of the child or the mid- or long-term safety of <em>all</em> the children. And the reaction of the hinky person, the people feeling the ick and anyone observing will be different accordingly.
For what it's worth, I think your response in this case seems exactly right, as is your analysis about the onlookers feeling uncomfortable because they themselves failed to act. There's a lot of literature about that, too, but I don't have access to most of it now, because I'm not an academic any more.
This sort of practice is used in both security systems design and in operational security.
There are terms used in the privacy/security research community: "icky" and "hinky". These are deliberately infantile terms because they describe innocent, visceral reactions to situations or events.
"Icky" is (usually) a reaction to something invasive, either physically, emotionally or (which is more my speciality) relating to data, observation, surveillance etc. Something feels icky if - either at the time or afterwards - a person feels something in an interaction or situation was wrong, that something happened without consent. Usually, we say something was icky when we can't quite describe what that something was or exactly how consent was circumvented. It's a visceral reaction to non-consensual circumstance or event which we can't necessarily quite explain.
"Hinky" is the behaviour of someone who does not seem to be up to any good. Your man here with his tickling 'game' was acting hinky. Again, we might not quite be able to put our finger on what constitutes hinkiness or how one person was being hinky and another not, but we tend to know it when we see it. Well-trained security personnel are trained to recognise and control their reaction to hinky behaviour so that they can act appropriately in a given situation. To be clear: this is training to recognise a gut reaction to something not-quite-definable, process it in context and evaluate potential responses.
What I'm saying is that there are some very serious people in academia and the various very serious security industries who take these ideas very seriously indeed. Since we can't brief people on every possible type of hinky behaviour or every kind of ick, we teach people to first recognise that their gut feelings are worth paying attention to and second how to process those feelings appropriately to craft a response. Should a response be confrontational? Should it be protective? Should it be dismissive? Should it be fast or safe? Should it escalate or de-escalate the situation? Should a police officer be strolling over to have a quiet word or should she be pulling a taser?
In your example, there are a number of 'correct' responses depending on whether the goal is the immediate protection of the child or the mid- or long-term safety of <em>all</em> the children. And the reaction of the hinky person, the people feeling the ick and anyone observing will be different accordingly.
For what it's worth, I think your response in this case seems exactly right, as is your analysis about the onlookers feeling uncomfortable because they themselves failed to act. There's a lot of literature about that, too, but I don't have access to most of it now, because I'm not an academic any more.
This sort of practice is used in both security systems design and in operational security.