Why do people freeze up when they are scared?

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i think i rememer hearing something about this called the fight or flight reaction where people will either choose to confront the danger (fight) or run away (flight) and if they cant make up their mind they freeze but i may be wrong.
hope i helped...Show more

Basically, a very, very long time ago, when humans were not at the top of the food chain, and the biggest political debate was "fire, a good thing or bad", we were still being hunted and eaten by other predators (not the aliens in the movies, but saber tooth thingies).
Anyways, when a group of humans is ambushed by predators, many that ran attracted the attention of the big kittys, and were eaten. Many that did not run were also eaten, but more "runners" then "freeze uppers" were eaten, so more of the freeze up genes were passed along (hard to pass your genes on to future generations when you are saber tooth tiger poo). Now humans got really tired of all this nonsense of "do I run and maybe get eaten, or do I freeze and hope not to be noticed". So a great deal of effort and time (many generations worth of people) when into the development of the BFR (big fricken rifle). The BFR enabled humans to stand and fight, and quickly got us to the top of the food chain. But, 500,000 years worth of freeze up programming is still lock into our skulls. It's gonna take more then 5000 years to reprogram ourselves....Show more

It's the bodies reaction to fesr...Show more

in my opinion i think ur brain is trying to process a couple of options wether to run,cry,die of a heart attack so in a bid to come up with the best alternative it stops for a moment....lol...Show more

I'd like to know the answer to that. i think its flight or fright situation or whatever its called though. ie it's wired in our brains....Show more