Emotions play a significant role in our everyday life and are important markers for predicting behavior. Also, emotions are prime indicators of the interaction between the individual's way of thinking and the surrounding world. Emotions have also been emphasized by various scholars in predictors of violent extremism. Positive emotion words (e.g., pleasure, joy) are used to describe positive events, while negative emotion words (anger, disgust) are used to describe negative events. A high degree of emotion words while describing an event also seems to correlate with a high degree of immersion in whatever event one is describing. These categories of emotions can be used to assess the emotionality in a text, and information can also be found in how the frequencies of positive and negative emotion words relate to each other. Normally, natural conversation contains almost twice as many positive than negative emotion words, while extremist texts have much higher relative degree of negative emotion words, mostly anger words.

The use of pronouns in natural language has been examined in various studies, and pronouns have been linked to different aspects of personality and emotion. Frequent use of third-person plural (they, them, etc.) in a group suggests that the group is defining itself to a large degree by the existence of an oppositional group. Frequent use of third-person plural is reliable indicators of negative identification with an out-group, which that can be considered as a precursor of intergroup conflict and sometimes extreme behavior. The use of third-person plural pronouns in the analysis of online groups such as American Nazis and animal rights groups has been proven to be the best predictor of extremism as rated by independent judges.

Leakage, the communication of intent to harm a specific target to a third party, usually implies a preoccupation with the target and may signal planning, or implementation of, for example, an attack. Research suggests that leakage commonly occurs in cases of targeted violence, ranging from school shootings to attacks on public figures. Leakage can be intentional or unintentional, and more or less specific with regards to the act. Studies on public figure attacks and assassinations have found a suggestive pattern of leakage, in which an attack has often been preceded by indirect, conditional, or direct threats. In different studies, the occurrence of pre-attack leakage ranges from 46% to 67%, and even higher for school shootings.

Personality refers to the psychological makeup of an individual. A more specific definition refers to the within the individual dynamic organization of those psychophysical systems that determine characteristic behaviors and thoughts. Personality is also assumed to comprise a set of psychological traits that are relatively enduring. A significant number of personality psychologists, not to say the majority, consider personality to be expressed in traits that are related to different aspects of human behaviors (e.g., interpersonal relations). In the contest of Dechefr personality trait implemented as unique signature of the individual. Specific focus is made on personality traits that previous research has shown to be related to antisocial, violent intentions and extreme behavior. Dechefr includes assessment of Big Five Personality (extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, & conscientiousness), the Dark Triad (machiavellianism, narcissism, & psychopathy) and Cognitive Tendencies (comparative mindset & close-mindedness).

Identification is a warning behavior indicating a desire to be a "pseudo-commando", have a warrior mentality, closely associate with weapons or other military or law-enforcement paraphernalia, identification with previous attackers or assassins, or identifying oneself as an agent to advance a particular cause. Identification includes identification with radical action and identification with a role model. Violent lone offenders often tend to identify themselves as a kind of warrior, a person who is prone to use structured violence for a "higher cause". In these cases, the use of military terminology and a strong interest in weapons and military strategies can be observed. In Dechefr, we measure the use of words that are related to military terminology since it could imply that the author have a desire to be a pseudo-commando. It has also been noted among previous cases of lone offenders that in many cases, they have been influenced by and to some extent identify themselves with other radical thinker or leader (influencers). In Dechefr this is measured by including mentions of potential influencers.

Fixation reflects pathological preoccupation with a person or a cause, for instance excessive perseveration on the object of fixation, excessive strident opinion, or excessive negative characterization of the object of fixation. In Dechefr, we assess excessive occupation in the text by displaying the most frequently used words that are depending on a topic. Dechefr also displays the most frequently used collocation phrases. Collocations are words that co-occur often in a specific text.

To assess whether the writer of a text belongs to a certain milieu or identifies with an ideology or special interest, Dechefr include a set of milieus/ideologies that have a specific jargon. If the writer uses terminology that is specific to a certain milieu, Dechefr will detect that. The milieus/ideologies that we have included in the current version of Dechefr are terminology of Islamic state, incel, counter jihad, alt-right, and white supremacy.