Fight or flight

• Fight or flight

  Hypothalmus registers a threat

  It alerts the sympathetic branch of the automatic nervous system

  The hormones adrenaline are released into the bloodstream from the adrenal glands

  The body shifts to a state of physological arousal eg heart beat quicker, preparing the body to use all resources for survival (biological changes)

  There shall also be psychological changes eg panic

  When the threat has past the parasympathetic branch shall return the body to a rest and digest state
• Physiological arousal


  Comes before and activates our experience of emotion
• Feeling sad


  Crying
• No change in physiological body


  No experience of emotion
• Emotions


  Each have a distinct pattern of physiological responses that is then interpreted by the brain as feeling a particular emotion
• Strengths of the theory


  • There are real life examples of emotion following physiological arousal
  • It can explain how our emotions can be controlled by controlling our physical responses
  • It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint that our body respond to the event first to allow for a quicker physical response as opposed to waiting for the event to be processed emotionally
• Examples of emotion following physiological arousal

  • Phobias
  • Panic attacks
• Example


  • You may fall down the stairs, leading to anxiety and embarrassment. You may then choose to avoid public situations as a link has been made between the situation and emotion. This suggests that emotion and avoidance occur as a result of physiological reaction.
• Many emotions have the same patterns of physiological arousal as fear and attraction. Both emotions have the response of quick heart rate and dilated pupils and theory struggles to explain how the body chooses which one to feel
• The theory is also challenged by other theories such as cannon bard theory
• Cannon Bard theory


  We experience physiological arousal at the same time as the emotion eg feeling embarrassed at the same time as blushing. Cannon also stated that we can experience physiological arousal whilst not experiencing an emotion for example during exercise
• The cannon bard theory can explain emotional experiences that the two factor theory struggles to
• The two factor theory is too simplistic
• Two factor theory


  Physiological arousal does come before arousal however we require social cues to interpret what emotion we are feeling. It explains how we interpret the same physiological state very differently depending on the situation/social cues
• The James-Lange theory does not explain how a person decides which emotions they are experiencing