The Deterrent Power of Presence: Visibility as a Non-Violent Epistemic Structure

This paper examines how being seen functions as a non-violent deterrent mechanism within social and ethical structures.
Drawing upon theories of behavioral psychology and moral philosophy—specifically Bandura’s outcome-expectation model, Zimbardo’s deindividuation theory, and Nietzsche’s conception of Will to Power—it conceptualizes presence as a form of cognitive governance that regulates human behavior through perception rather than coercion.

Empirical data from the International Labour Organization (2022), European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2024), UNICEF (2022), and UN Women (2023) are integrated to demonstrate both the potential and limits of visibility as deterrence.
While visibility restrains rational aggressors through anticipated social loss, it often fails against irrational or ideologically motivated actors.
Case analyses—including the Sarah Everard case (UK, 2021), Tomita Mayu case (Japan, 2016), and the Christchurch mosque attack (New Zealand, 2019)—illustrate these boundaries.

The study proposes a three-phase cognitive framework—Existence, Relation, and Legacy—to explain how ethical visibility transforms observation into sustainable peace.
Ultimately, it argues that visibility, when ethically structured, can function as a non-violent epistemic shield—replacing coercion with cognition, and control with awareness.