Main questions:
-Do human infants (having physical limitations) fight or flight or does it take experience to have the potential of fight or flight? Do we have to learn a certain number of things to make the natural ability of fight or flight a reality?

Secondary related question:
-How much does our total 'programming' apply to the actual reaction (or possible outcomes) whether we consciously decide to or not?

No takers? ....lol

Not really understanding the question, since human infants remain at the mercy of nature without a parent. The most helpless at birth of all the animal kingdom, and hence, both the inability of flight or fight.

But do they fight or flight internally then because they don't have the physically ability yet?

So biologically speaking fight or flight has no real significance without experience and physical ability?

Unlike animals, humans are equipped with a large cerebral cortex that allows for reasoning, consideration, creativity and behavior control. Humans are not hard wired like computers, ware given a fixed command or stimulus results in a fixed response. We have the ability to choose our course of action and our decisions are preceded by will and thought. This capability has enabled us to survive and stand greater than animals. Because of our ability to consciously choose the values we instill in our children, our species can influence the outcome of our children's behavior. Choice is the ability to select from a number of alternatives. When frustrated an individual has the choice to react in a certain manner. They can think about something else, distance themselves, suppress their anger or even laugh it off. The magnificence of human complexity is our ability to choose from an infinite amount of possible reactions.

the real question is this- -Do human infants (having physical limitations) fight or flight or does it take experience to have the potential of fight or flight? Do we have to learn a certain number of things to make the natural ability of fight or flight a reality?


It is really good to talk to you again by the way after so much time has passes. =]

I believe their life experiences will activate the flight or fight impulse.

Good to talk to you too, love.

I would say they would have to gain life experiences to choose a fight or flight mechanism, but that it can be influenced by the child's natural attitude. The happy child has an easier time at life just because of the way it handles it self and how the said child accepts its surroundings. Whereas, a cranky child has a harder time due to its crankiness and inacceptance of it surroundings and instinctual attitude.

In infancy th only way a child gets it needs met remains to let someone know there is a need. Now how that child indicates its need, may indicate whether it has a natural affinity for flight or fight to survive. A child that starts out making noises to let you know the child is awake or whether it constant squalls can be an indication of the child itself.

There were a series of experiments with pre-toddlers called the visual cliff experiments.

A large glass table top was made to look like the floor but near the center the fake flooring was removed and the result was a visual cliff. Crawling infants have no concept of glass but there was a hypothesis that such children would instinctively recognize the dager a cliff presented.

The hypothesis was correct and children would avoid the cliff or turn away from it --- flight.

Then the question was, could the trust a baby has in its mother be enough to coax that baby to venture beyond the cliff.

Mother at one end, baby placed at the other, and between them the visual cliff.

Before a certain age almost no children would venture accross, some stopped and cried, probably becuase it had no way of getting to its mother. But just several weeks beyond that age, most babies could be coaxed, at least to the point of carefully testing a hand, and then another until it no longer even noticed the cliff.

That's flight (baby style)and I had given a previous example of a small child who was cognicent of spankings, being told in an angry voice to COME HERE, NOW and the child running in the other direction.

As for fight, consider the behavior described as learned helplessness (Seligman). We tend to take flight from situations that by, instinct or cognitive skills,we determine we are not capable of overcoming. But what about situation in which the human has a real or perceived total lack of control?

We can't flee and we can't fight, so we surrender. At this junction I would point in the direction of child abuse. Even infants stop crying and accept abuse, why? Could it be that they are incapable of taking either fight or flight action?

We know that infants will flee, we know that the instinct can be overriden in a slightly older child through trust, even if it's only a guarded trust and we know one more thing - that a baby cries.

You can ask the mother of any 1 or 2 month old infant and she will tell when that baby's cry is hunger, pain, or anger. Perhaps the only ability an infant has to fight is to cry.

Does that help with the answer to the OP or does it only confuse the issue?

Thank you both for the well thought out answers and I appreciate your input... I am just trying to wrap my head around this-The hypothesis was correct and children would avoid the cliff or turn away from it --- flight.

All the toddlers/babies that I have known have unique personality traits. Some were crabby and some were not, some were colicky and some hardly ever cried, some enjoyed other people and some just wanted to be by their biological parents.

All I have seen, with my own eyes, is that there is no fear until fear is taught or self taught. Maybe their depth perception is established enough at that point to make those decisions. Isn't part of that experience though? Programming?
Maybe the baby they used avoided the false cliff but some of the ones I have known not only would they have went off the cliff, but they would have first fell down the stairs while drinking poison, choking on a hotdog, sticking their fingers in an outlet and pulling the family dogs whiskers (possible mauling). =]

Do you think they have the biological ability to eventually (through self/and other programming) be able to refine their depth perceptions enough to avoid the glass cliff? As in that experiment?
It seems to me that is what happen.

By the way everything helps and it really makes me think. Thanks a googolplex! You rock=]

You have to learn that a thing is feared to have that kind of response toward it.

Many examples exist of all kinds of animals not understanding danger. Other examples of animals that have recently learned to fear something engaging in this response.

Curiosity killed the cat, the dog however saw it happen and RAN THE F AWAY. LOL

I do agree that I consider crying for an infant fighting for survival and crawling away flight for an infant once they reach the age of the ability of flight. No so sure, though that flight isn't somewhat larned just as crawling or walking would be learned. Therefore, I would say a child from earliest infancy would naturally fight from birth. When considering the Nature VS. Nuture Child Development stages.

it's an instinct that we have little control over - it's controlled by the limbic system connected to the autonomic nervous system meaning the part of the cns that controls reactions that are NOT chosen - not concious choices (versus the part of the cns that WE control by choosing, for example to move my fingers to type)

there is a lot of discussion re the limbic system but basically ^ that is correct - there ya go psych 101

people are usually predisposed to either flight or stay & fight

These are inanswerable questions.

- to know whether experience or learing is the one or innate insticts, to make a man fight or flee, can only be decided for sure by empirical trials, and those are not possible to conduct in this day and age with humans, because it would necessatiate to grow a group and a control group WITH NO CULTURAL INFLUENCE for the experiement to an age when they can fight or flee physically. This age is no earlier than five or six, and that is too long to leave a human child unattended, to his her own devices, without sociatal protection.

- The second question is even less answerable, as the parameters themselves are imprecisely conceptualized, and the measurements are completely unnumericable, so "how much, as a fraction or percentage, is wholly meaningless in this context.

This is further convoluted by using the word "programming", which can be either genetic (congenital) programming, or else cultural or learned programming, but you don't name which one of the two you mean.

If you mean both genetic and cultural programming together, then I'd say 100% of the programming would be responsible for our reactions, but only if we call the learning of lifeskills by an individual "cultural" programming. There are other learning tools, such as boulders falling on one's head or birds attacking him, or bees, when he is not with humans, and these also contribute learned information on how to react in the future. They are truly learned and not cultural.

So in effect there is a third type of influence, and that is learning with no cultural influence reactions and behaviour that is not innate.

I don't know if this is satisfactory an answer for you.

These aren't the only alternatives. It is possible that there are flight/flight responses which are not learned, and which are not innate in babies - because they don't come into play until a certain level of glandular development occurs.

I fight unless the odds are way against me then comes flight only to fight again another day.

Seconded. Btw too much Fight and Flight stimulation is not good for you. And a baby shouldn't be in that mode as well.

I have discovered about myself: I am a" woman warrior"

When I need to be. And, by the grace of G-d ( positive energy in the Universe) there's always been a real Angels for me: a teacher, a friend, mom, dad, unexpected kind and generous people.

I have always heard that an infant has a natural fear of falling.

As for fight or flight, children of extreme abuse who can't take flight physically will develop a splintered personality.

This is well known and said to be used by MK Ultra mind control to purposely splinter a personality and use that personality for passing top secret information as it can be programmed to hold a lot of detailed information. The brain is like a computer in that respect.