Development and Psychometric Investigation of an Inventory to Assess Fight, Flight, and Freeze Tendencies: The Fight, Flight, Freeze Questionnaire

Abstract

Fear is a psychological construct inherent in assessment of and reaction to threat. Its expression has been associated with individual differences in temperament, personality, and behavioral inhibition. Defining and subsequently assessing these individual differences in fear as a trait-like variable, however, have been largely neglected by researchers. Although there are well-established measures of fear, these primarily assess response to phobic stimuli rather than a reaction tendency to acute fear. As such, the goals of the present studies were to create, pilot, and revise a scale to assess the general construct of trait-like response to fear as it relates to underlying individual differences. Following guidelines for scale development, outlined by Haynes, Richard, and Kubany (1995 [Content validity in psychological assessment: A functional approach to concepts and methods. Psychological Assessment, 7, 238–247]) results of the current investigation provide strong, initial support for the factor structure, reliability, and construct validity of a new measure of trait-like fear: the Fight, Flight, Freeze questionnaire.