Fight or flight ✈️

• What happens to the body when a threat is perceived?

  • a stressors is activates the hypothalamus.
  • hypothalamus sends signals to sympathetic nervous system.
  • neurones from sympathetic send message to adrenal glands, releasing adrenaline.
  • heart rate increases, pupils dilate, breathing increase, sweat, blood pressure increase.
• What happens to the body when the threat has passed?

  • The stressor goes away.
  • parasympathetic nervous system returns body to resting state by:
  • decreasing heart rate
  • decreasing blood pressure
  • starting up digestion
• Gut:

  • during fight or flight - inhibits digestion
  • resting state - stimulates digestion
• Salivary glands:

  • fight or flight - inhibits saliva production
  • resting state - stimulate saliva production
• Lungs:

  • fight or flight - dilutes bronchi
  • resting state - contract bronchi
• Weakness:

  P -fight or flight doesn’t consider freeze element:

  Ex - Gray suggests we demonstrate ’freeze response‘. This is where we become hyper-vigilant, so decided next course of actions.

  L - therefore, fight-fight explanation limited and doesn’t explain cognitive/behavioural factors.
• Weakness:

  • P - fight or flight response can be maladaptive for modern society stressors.
  • Ex - while might be useful for life threatening situations, modern day life rarely requires intense biological responses.
  • L - maladaptive response to contemporary life.
• Weakness:

  • P - explanation may suffer from beta bias.
  • Ex - Taylor et al females adopt ‘tend and befriend’ response to stressful situations (more likely to protect offspring).
  • L - flight or fight response may be limited to application of females.