Fight or Flight Versus Tend and Befriend
The dominant model of the human responses to stress has been the fight or flight response. In response to threat, humans (and other animals) can become aggressive and confront a stressor (fight) or flee either literally or through avoidant coping, such as social withdrawal or substance abuse. From the standpoint of human beings, however, this analysis of stress responses is incomplete. Another tendency is to affiliate, that is, to come together in groups in threatening times. This tend and befriend response refers to the fact that people often manage threats by caring for offspring and seeking social support in time of stress.
Read more about this topic: Tend And Befriend
Famous quotes containing the words fight, flight and/or tend:
“Defoe says that there were a hundred thousand country fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason’s imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)