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Intimidation is an attempt to frighten or overawe by speaking or acting in a dominating manner, often with the goal of making a person or people do what the intimidator wants. It is a maladaptive outgrowth of normal competitive urge for interrelational dominance generally seen in animals, but which is more completely modulated by social forces in humans.
Like all behavioral traits it exists in greater or lesser manifestation in each individual person over time, but may be a more significant compensatory behavior for some as opposed to others. Behavioral theorists often see intimidation in children as a consequence of being intimidated by others, including parents, playmates and siblings.
Intimidation may be employed consciously or unconsciously, and a percentage of people who employ it consciously may do so as the result of rationalized notions of its appropriateness, utility or self-empowerment.
Intimidation may be manifested in such manner as physical threat, glowering countenance, emotional manipulation, verbal abuse, purposeful embarrassment and/or actual physical assault.
"Intimidation"