Have you ever thought about how you would react if you encountered a sudden disaster? Will you run away immediately, or face it bravely? Will you panic or react calmly? You may find these questions difficult to answer because you have not experienced such a situation. However, for firefighters, these issues are part of their daily routine. Firefighters often face life-or-death emergencies. How do they stay calm and make the right decisions during a crisis? Scientists have studied this and discovered some interesting facts.
Freeze Reaction: Human Instinct
When we encounter a threat, our bodies react in an instinctive way called the freeze response. Like a mouse seeing a cat, we feel stiff and unable to move. This is a defense mechanism that helps us assess risk and make decisions. The freeze response allows us to choose the best course of action, such as flight, fight, or hiding. Therefore, the freezing response is not a useless response, but a beneficial response.
High Risk Occupations: Special Training for Firefighters
However, for a high-risk profession like firefighters, the freeze response may not be the most appropriate response. Firefighters need to make decisions quickly and respond proactively in extreme situations without wasting time. They need to control their instinctive reactions and use their experience and skills to handle crises. So, how do firefighters do this? Scientists have found that experience and training are key factors.
Science Experiment: Firefighter’s Freeze Reaction
A study from the Netherlands Fire Academy compared changes in the body movements and heart rates of experienced and inexperienced firefighters while viewing pictures of threatening scenes. A decrease in body movement and heart rate is a sign of the freezing response. The results showed that experienced firefighters froze less often than inexperienced firefighters. Moreover, this difference is not just for fire-related threats, but is valid for all threat scenarios.
Scientific Explanation: The Role of Experience and Training
Scientists believe the findings show that experience and training can alter firefighters’ primitive defensive responses. Experienced firefighters benefit from goal-directed behaviors and other coping skills by being more flexibly able to control their reflexive responses. They were more efficient at dealing with threats than less experienced firefighters, which was reflected in reduced freezing. This does not mean that inexperienced firefighters respond worse to freezing; for them, the degree of freezing is also important to support their risk assessment.
Future Outlook: The Significance of Freezing Reactions
This study provides a window into how firefighters stay calm during a crisis. It also gets us thinking about the role of the freeze response in resilience and coping. Future research could further explore how experience and training lead to changes in defensive responses and how these changes manifest in different contexts. In addition, this knowledge can also help us better understand some characteristics of mental illness, such as excessive or insufficient coping behaviors.
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