The Fight-or-Flight Response

Doctor Daniel Pine introduces the fight-or-flight response, which is a common mechanism in mammals in response to a threat. It prepares the body to either run away or fight the threat.

So, we talked a little bit about anxiety as a bunch of different responses to danger and one of the interesting things about anxiety is that probably because, for our ancestors certain kinds of responses were adaptive, we see a lot of similarities in terms of how different kinds of mammals respond to danger. Nonhuman primates, humans, and rodents all have similar kinds of responses when they are confronted by danger. So for some kinds of dangers, all these organisms produce certain changes in the body that prepare the body to cope with danger and one of these sets of responses is what is called the fight-or-flight response. The idea behind the fight-or-flight response is that when an organism – a mammal in particular – faces an acute threat, something that is very dangerous that is right in front of it, the body undergoes a series of changes that prepare that mammal to either run away from that dangerous thing which would be a flight response, which is usually the first option. If running away is not an option then the other option is to fight. That is why we call that the fight-or-flight response and there are both similarities in terms of that response among mammals but there are also differences. In humans related to the very complex aspects of how our brain works that are more complicated than another mammals - that brings uniquely human aspects to our fight-or-flight response.