Under pressure, Julien Duret of Lyon, France, jumped to the icy waters in New York City as he rescued two year old Bridget Sheridan. Her perplexed father jumped right after him to save his daughter. Duret handed her to the mortified dad.
Duret says he didn’t think twice about jumping in and saving the girl. He reacted fast and had never done anything like this before, he says.
How common – or uncommon – is it for us to react under pressure?
Can we predict who will react and who will freeze?
We have no personality tests or neuropsychological testing that would suggest our reaction under pressure and yet, there may be ways in which we could foretell the person’s predisposition to respond positively under such an extreme situation.
As you may experience a true emergency (instead of reacting to challenges as if they were all urgent fires to be extinguished), the adrenaline rush heightens all senses, finding precision in the reaction (Duret could have been hurt in the fall) and a quick and positive solution.
I have met experts who trained to react in high pressure situations who then paralyzed when they encountered a critical situation and I have met the unsuspecting tourist who became the hero passerby as in this situation.
Food for thought
How about you? Is your natural tendency to react right away or do you tend to take the time to react when in unexpected critical situations?
