A reaction with inappropriate emotional behavior

Usage examples of overreaction.

Fifty years ago the somber, overwrought architecture of the Later Expansion period had been extremely fashionable, an overreaction, perhaps, to the excessive ebullience of the Early Exploration period that preceded it.

Second, Desert Fox had knocked Saddam off balance, and for much of 1999 he was forced to turn inward and deal with the problems that the strikes and his overreactions had created.

Part of me says, load up the B-2 bombers on Guam with the B-61 gravity bombs and send them to Beijing, but I suppose that's a little bit of an overreaction.

In addition, because of the fear they produce, CW and BW can kill a lot of people just from overreactions due to panic.

On one or two occasions the events of the past few months had almost prompted him into being swayed by the overreactions and panickings of his lesser aides and acting prematurely.

If anything, I was more inclined to stay inside my clinical, fact-only lawyer's mind and was not given to overreactions and emotional projections.

Nelson was used to our overreactions to what he felt were ordinary things, such as cobras in the kitchen.

The Bureau had learned its lesson (yet again, he conceded) about overreaction, Big Brotherliness, and clumsy interventions brought on by panic attacks among its leadership, which was one reason DuChamps had been chosen for her job.

The media and the agents of social control have been more aware of the consequences of exaggeration and overreaction and are more cautious in attributing to sections of society, some of the aforementioned characteristics of, what Stanley Cohen named, the folk devils.