What determines a person's "fight, flight, or freeze" response?

Question

I understand what the response itself is; when a human is confronted with a real threat, their instinct is to fight the threat, flee from it, or they just freeze in terror.

I'm wondering what the determining factor would be for which of these three instincts a person's brain would have?

I'm sure that it's situational -for example, if a person felt responsible for their friend or partner's safety at that very moment- and I imagine a very tall/strong person would be more immediately confident and more likely to fight, but could a short/weak person potentially fight as well, just out of instinct?

Answer 1

It is not a conscious decision. The sympathetic nervous system immediately reacts and the body follows. However, this doesn't mean a person is going to react the same way to every situation every time. It may depend on what the threat is. Sometimes it is easy to imagine hypothetical situations and how certain people would be likely to respond to them. But it really is pretty impossible to know without that person being actually being in that situation. Sometimes people will react completely opposite of what you may think. Hope this answer helped. If you have any further questions please feel free to send me a message!