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Updated: Feb 20, 2026
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A Novel Pavlovian Fear Conditioning Paradigm to Study Freezing and Flight Behavior
Published on: January 5, 2021
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Incident experience predicts freezing-like responses in firefighters
Verena Ly1,2, Linsey Roijendijk3,4, Hans Hazebroek5
1Department of Clinical Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Plos One
|October 19, 2017
Summary
Experienced firefighters show less threat-induced freezing than inexperienced ones. Incident experience may alter primary defense responses, suggesting freezing is malleable and potentially linked to resilience in high-risk professions.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Occupational Health
Background:
- Freezing is a stress response linked to coping and attention.
- Its alteration in high-risk professions with rapid decision-making needs investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effect of incident experience in high-risk professions on threat-induced freezing.
- To explore if threat relatedness influences this effect.
Main Methods:
- Forty experienced and inexperienced firefighters participated.
- Participants viewed neutral, pleasant, related-unpleasant, and unrelated-unpleasant images.
- Postural sway and heart rate were measured to assess freezing.
Main Results:
- Experienced firefighters exhibited reduced freezing responses to unpleasant images compared to inexperienced ones.
- The relatedness of unpleasant images did not significantly alter freezing behavior.
Conclusions:
- Higher incident experience correlates with decreased threat-induced freezing in a passive context.
- This suggests primary defense responses, like freezing, are adaptable with experience.
- Findings support translational approaches for studying defensive behaviors in high-risk professions and resilience.
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