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Tactile defensiveness in autistic individuals is the least investigated sensory modality. The current multi-component, explorative study aimed to understand the experiences of ten autistic adults regarding tactile defensiveness and fabrics, using semi-structured, one-to-one interviews. Participants were asked to discuss the effects of seven provided samples of fabrics and were also asked to bring their ‘favourite’ fabric (s) and express their thoughts about their choices. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and Content Analysis, the findings showed that some fabrics can impact individuals’ reported wellbeing. Participants’ experiences with several stimuli appeared to have helped them implement coping strategies. By understanding tactile defensiveness, society could move towards increasing autism-friendly approaches with appropriate fabrics. Recommendations for future research, policy and practice are also discussed.

After committing an offense, a transgressor faces an important decision regarding whether and how to apologize to the person who was harmed. The actions he or she chooses to take after committing an offense can have dramatic implications for the victim, the transgressor, and their relationship. Although high-quality apologies are extremely effective at promoting reconciliation, transgressors often choose to offer a perfunctory apology, withhold an apology, or respond defensively to the victim. Why might this be? In this article, I propose three major barriers to offering high-quality apologies: (a) low concern for the victim or relationship, (b) perceived threat to the transgressor’s self-image, and (c) perceived apology ineffectiveness. I review recent research examining how these barriers affect transgressors’ apology behavior and describe insights this emerging work provides for developing methods to move transgressors toward more reparative behavior. Finally, I discuss important directions for future research.

Research on defensive behaviour in mammals has in recent years focused on elicited reactions; however, organisms also make active choices when responding to danger. We propose a hierarchical taxonomy of defensive behaviour on the basis of known psychological processes. Included are three categories of reactions (reflexes, fixed reactions and habits) and three categories of goal-directed actions (direct action-outcome behaviours and actions based on implicit or explicit forecasting of outcomes). We then use this taxonomy to guide a summary of findings regarding the underlying neural circuits.

Survival in threatening situations depends on the selection and rapid execution of an appropriate active or passive defensive response, yet the underlying brain circuitry is not understood. Here we use circuit-based optogenetic, in vivo and in vitro electrophysiological, and neuroanatomical tracing methods to define midbrain periaqueductal grey circuits for specific defensive behaviours. We identify an inhibitory pathway from the central nucleus of the amygdala to the ventrolateral periaqueductal grey that produces freezing by disinhibition of ventrolateral periaqueductal grey excitatory outputs to pre-motor targets in the magnocellular nucleus of the medulla. In addition, we provide evidence for anatomical and functional interaction of this freezing pathway with long-range and local circuits mediating flight. Our data define the neuronal circuitry underlying the execution of freezing, an evolutionarily conserved defensive behaviour, which is expressed by many species including fish, rodents and primates. In humans, dysregulation of this ‘survival circuit’ has been implicated in anxiety-related disorders. A combination of optogenetic, electrophysiological and neuroanatomical tracing methods defines midbrain periaqueductal grey circuits for specific defensive behaviours. Brain circuits choosing the response to threat A mouse perceiving a threat has a choice between two principal means of defence: active flight or a passive 'freeze'. Andreas Lüthi and colleagues have used a combination of optogenetic, electrophysiological and neuroanatomical tracing to identify the neural circuits underlying the control of these different strategies. They identify a pathway from the amygdala to the periaqueductal grey that not only mediates freezing, but also interacts with circuits mediating flight. Freezing is an evolutionarily conserved behaviour in many species, including fish, rodents and primates. In humans, dysregulation of this 'survival circuit' has been implicated in anxiety-related disorders.

In humans and rodents, the perception of control during stressful events has lasting behavioral consequences. These consequences are apparent even in situations that are distinct from the stress context, but how the brain links prior stressful experience to subsequent behaviors remains poorly understood. By assessing innate defensive behavior in a looming-shadow task, we show that the initiation of an escape response is preceded by an increase in the activity of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) neurons in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus (CRHPVN neurons). This anticipatory increase is sensitive to stressful stimuli that have high or low levels of outcome control. Specifically, experimental stress with high outcome control increases CRHPVN neuron anticipatory activity, which increases escape behavior in an unrelated context. By contrast, stress with no outcome control prevents the emergence of this anticipatory activity and decreases subsequent escape behavior. These observations indicate that CRHPVN neurons encode stress controllability and contribute to shifts between active and passive innate defensive strategies.Prior stressful experience affects subsequent behavior even in different situations. Daviu et al. demonstrate that CRHPVN neurons encode stress controllability and contribute to shifts between active and passive innate defensive strategies.

When detecting a threat, humans and other animals engage in defensive behaviors and supporting physiological adjustments that vary with threat imminence and potential response options. In the present study, we shed light on the dynamics of defensive behaviors and associated physiological adjustments in humans using multiple psychophysiological and brain measures. When participants were exposed to a dynamically approaching, uncontrollable threat, attentive freezing was augmented, as indicated by an increase in skin conductance, fear bradycardia, and potentiation of the startle reflex. In contrast, when participants had the opportunity to actively avoid the approaching threat, attention switched to response preparation, as indicated by an inhibition of the startle magnitude and by a sharp drop of the probe-elicited P3 component of the evoked brain potentials. These new findings on the dynamics of defensive behaviors form an important intersection between animal and human research and have important implications for understanding fear and anxiety-related disorders.

BackgroundAlcohol binge drinking may compromise the functioning of the nucleus accumbens (NAc), i.e. the neural hub for processing reward and aversive responses.MethodsAs socially stressful events pose particular challenges at developmental stages, this research applied the resident–intruder paradigm as a model of social stress, to highlight behavioural neuroendocrine and molecular maladaptive plasticity in rats at withdrawal from binge-like alcohol exposure in adolescence. In search of a rescue agent, cannabidiol (CBD) was selected due to its favourable effects on alcohol- and stress-related harms.ResultsBinge-like alcohol exposed intruder rats displayed a compromised defensive behaviour against the resident and a blunted response of the stress system, in addition to indexes of abnormal dopamine (DA)/glutamate plasticity and dysfunctional spine dynamics in the NAc. CBD administration (60 mg/kg) was able to: (1) increase social exploration in the binge-like alcohol exposed intruder rats, at the expenses of freezing time, and in control rats, which received less aggressive attacks from the resident; (2) reduce corticosterone levels independently on alcohol previous exposure; (3) restore DA transmission and (4) facilitate excitatory postsynaptic strength and remodelling.ConclusionsOverall, the maladaptive behavioural and synaptic plasticity promoted by the intersection between binge-like alcohol withdrawal and exposure to adverse social stress can be rescued by a CBD détente effect that results in a successful defensive strategy, supported by a functional endocrine and synaptic plasticity. The current data highlight CBD's relevant therapeutic potential in alcohol- and stress-related harms, and prompt further investigation on its molecular targets.

This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors' \"CEO-speak\" about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: (1) regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, (2) fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and (3) projecting, or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change.

If there is one thing all university rankings have in common, it is that they are the target of widespread criticism. This article takes the many challenges university rankings are facing as its point of departure and asks how they navigate their hostile environment. The analysis proceeds in three steps. First, we unveil two modes of ranking critique, one drawing attention to negative effects, the other to methodological shortcomings. Second, we explore how rankers respond to these challenges, showing that they either deflect criticism with a variety of defensive responses or that they respond confidently by drawing attention to the strengths of university rankings. In the last step, we examine mutual engagements between rankers and critics that are based on the entwinement of methodological critique and confident responses. While the way rankers respond to criticism generally explains how rankings continue to flourish, it is precisely the ongoing conversation with critics that facilitates what we coin the discursive resilience of university rankings. The prevalence of university rankings is, in other words, a product of the mutual discursive work of their proponents and opponents.

Defensiveness is often implicated in systemic organisational failures to explain why early warning signs were ignored and organisational resilience was compromised. But how does an organisation become defensive? We propose that defensiveness can arise as a response to contradictory work demands. Our research focuses on UK hospital staff tasked with responding to criticism online (herein complaint handlers). We examine these responses to criticism using a mixed methods explanatory sequential design. Six defensive tactics were reliably identified: redirecting patients to other channels, evading issues, psychologising concerns, invalidating concerns as incomplete, closing the feedback episode, and individualising concerns with bespoke workarounds. These defensive tactics were generally associated with less organisational learning and were sometimes viewed as unhelpful. To explain these results, we introduce the complaint handler’s bind: staff are tasked with responding to complaints without a viable pathway for organisational learning and an implicit injunction against voicing this dilemma. This demand-control double bind unwittingly gives staff little alternative but to be defensive. Future research, we conclude, needs to conceptualise defensiveness as sometimes a symptom rather than a cause of problems in organisational learning.