Fight-or-flight response
physiological reaction to a perceived threat or harmful event
The fight-or-flight or the fight-flight-or-freeze response, also known as hyperarousal or acute stress response, is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. It was first described by Walter Bradford Cannon in 1914 which he referred to as "the necessities of fighting or flight" in 1915. His theory states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system, preparing the animal for fighting or fleeing. More specifically, the adrenal medulla produces a hormonal cascade that results in the secretion of catecholamines, especially norepinephrine and epinephrine. The hormones estrogen, testosterone, and cortisol, as well as the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin, also affect how organisms react to stress. The hormone osteocalcin might also play a part.
This response is recognised as the first stage of the general adaptation syndrome that regulates stress responses among vertebrates and other organisms.
Name
Originally understood as the "fight-or-flight" response in Cannon's research, the state of hyperarousal results in several responses beyond fighting or fleeing. The wider array of responses, such as freezing, flop, faint, flee and fright, has led researchers to use more neutral or accommodating terminology such as "hyperarousal" or the "acute stress response". This has led people to calling it the "fight, flight, freeze" response, "fight-flight-freeze-fawn" or "fight-flight-faint-or-freeze", among other variants.
The public source identifies “Fight-or-flight response” as physiological reaction to a perceived threat or harmful event. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fight-or-flight, response and physiological.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1640582. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1914 and 1915.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fight-or-flight response” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.