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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences pp 1590–1595Cite as

Fight-Flight-Freeze System

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Synonyms

Defensive system; Fear system; FFFS; Fight-flight system

Definition

The Fight-Flight-Freeze system is a neurobehavioral system postulated to mediate defensive responses to unconditioned and conditioned threat stimuli, and is subjectively associated with the emotion of fear. It is one of the three systems postulated in the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) of personality.

Introduction

The fight-flight-freeze system (FFFS) is one of the three affective-motivational systems postulated in revised Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (r-RST; Gray and McNaughton 2000), a biological account of personality. The FFFS is activated in response to perceived threat, mediates reactions to aversive stimuli, and is subjectively experienced as fear. As a negative feedback system that seeks equilibrium through the reduction of immediate threat, FFFS behavioral responses share the function of moving the organism away from threat (Corr 2008). Specifically, as the defensive distance between an...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Applied Behavioral Sciences, University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA

    John J. Donahue

Authors
  1. John J. Donahue
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Correspondence to John J. Donahue .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Julie Schermer

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Donahue, J.J. (2020). Fight-Flight-Freeze System. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_751

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