I am not arguing that this may not occur, I am just explaining to you that this under conscious control. There is no “reflex” you speak of. If it were, it wouldn’t be possible for humans to handle snakes, sharp objects, or properly domesticate animals. The police officer hit the kid because he wanted to, not because of some phantom reflex you (and other posters) are trying to conjure up.
Whenever I’ve suddenly noticed that some nasty bug is crawling on my shirt or pants, I’ve always brushed it away with little or no conscious thought. I don’t know if that’s a “reflex” but I think the same mechanism would apply if you realize somebody is biting you. There seems to be a strong instinctive urge to get the offensive thing away from you.
I predict you could observe this phenomenon in 2-year-old humans all over the world as well as in baboons and other species. I doubt you’d get a Nobel Prize for it though.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re not thinking this through very well. Tell you what, have a relative suddenly bite you and see if you lash out at their head. It’s not a reflex in the sense of the doctor’s kneetap, but it is instinctual. Are you able to see that? Or is perhaps your venom about this issue blinding you to the obvious?
No, you’re getting caught up in a semantic nitpick and trying to distract us. “Reflex”, like “vagina” has both a medical, scientific meaning and a general lay-person meaning, and they aren’t the same thing. No one here is suggesting that the officer’s autonomic nervous system took over - the medical meaning of “reflex”. Rather, we’re suggesting that hitting a person who has just bitten you is a perfectly natural behavior that is unconsciously triggered and that one has to be conditioned out of as a child. Under stress, that conditioning sometimes disappears. That’s what we’re calling a “reflex”, and it’s a common lay-person definition of the word.
Do you think, watching the video, that the officer experienced the bite and then consciously chose to hit her in the face in retaliation? If so, then we simply disagree - I see no time span for that to happen in. If not, then you understand exactly what we’re talking about and you’re trying to distract us with pedantry.
I actually thought the complete opposite.
If it was a white girl then people would assume “dumb white trash bitch was going nuts and deserved what she got” case closed.
Because it was a black girl suddenly it becomes a race issue with the “white” cop beating on the “black” girl out of hate. The community declares outrage and the cop is put on suspension. There’s an investigation. Jackson and Sharpton make an appearance, yada-yada.
You guys keep saying “it’s a reflex”; “an unconscious reaction”; and now, “instinctual” but none of you have provided a shred of data indicating that is. If I am bitten, my counterattack will be of my own volition. There are “revenge” circuits in the dorsal striatum but these too are under conscious control. When he was bitten and withdrew his arm, he could have reached for the pepper spray instead of punching the girl in the face. Like I stated before (and I’m sure I’ll end up stating it again and again ad nauseum) the cop hit the kid because he wanted to. End of story.
Yes.
Have you ever seen a nasty bug crawling on your leg and brushed it off quickly with little or no conscious thought?
You can say it until you run out of breath. You can type it until you use up every spare electron in the universe. That doesn’t make it so.
Yes.
I was sitting in my friend’s dorm room in college when her idiot roommate sprayed her pepper spray just a little bit, ‘to see what it smelled like’. With the ceiling fan in the room it circulated quickly and all of us felt it and promptly vacated. That was just a little toot at a wall.
This cop (quite rightfully) blasts her good. How come he didn’t feel it’s effects as well?
What about fight or flight, or a mother’s (and most certainly father’s) instinct, reflex, whatever-you-want-to-call-it automatic need to protect their child?
I’m a little confused. The article you link to discusses a reflex that is transmitted by nerve endings near the skin.
I’m talking about a situation where you realize a bug is there because you see it, not because you feel it. Have you been in that situation?
Here’s another ‘if’:
Q: What if the girl had just not resisted?
A: She’d be in a shitload of trouble because she was out past curfew, probably without her parents knowing, with a garbage bag full of clothes with tags still on them. She’s holding onto that bag during much of the struggle, and doesn’t want him to see what’s in it, obviously. She didn’t want Mommy and Daddy to know the racket she had going on, or that she was hangin out with the other half of the couple which must run faster than she does.
Girl needs to watch this educational video.
Watch this for an example of an automatic response to a threatening stimulus. It is very clear that the guy doing the punching is reacting without thinking.
Honesty , You are obscuring the issue. I was released from the USAF for having a mild stress disorder that has had the effect of nearly eliminating my “flight” response when stressed. After testing, it was determined that under any stimulus that I perceive to be aggressive in nature, I responded with disproportional aggression over 90% of the time. It is somewhat related to this condition. At any time a person’s evaluation of the flight or fight response is totally unconcious. That cop didn’t think about popping her one any more that you would scream and fling a hand out at someone who grabbed you.
The kid definitely looks a bit apologetic after he did the punching. Sort of a, “Oh…uh…it was just a kid in a mask…” It’s not like there’s a “punch people now” reflex. It’s just something you often do when you’re very frightened/hurt. There’s no reflex that says you start shrieking and acting like an idiot when you see a bug, but that’s how I react (idiotically, granted).
Nice find. You should be getting that call from Stockholm any day now.
Right, it’s not a reflex like say your pupils contracting to sudden bright light. It’s just that when suddenly frightened or hurt, you’re not going to react with calm reason. It’s easy to say the officer shouldn’t have hit her, but sudden pain can cause the most well trained of us to act irrationally. If she didn’t want to get hit, she shouldn’t have bit.