The Yerkes-Dodson Law: stress (up to a point) improves performance

The Yerkes—Dodson LawStress (up to a point) improves performance

In 1908 psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Gillingham Dodson examined the effect of stress and arousal on attention and motivation

They presented rats with a maze which had one right way through

If the rats went the wrong way they got an electric shock

Increasing the intensity of the electric shock improved the rate of learning among the rats up to a point

Beyond a certain voltage the rats’ performance started to decrease – they slowed down, froze, retreated and forgot where was safe and where was dangerous

Conclusion

Increasing stress and arousal helps focus attention and improves motivation for the task at hand but only up to a certain point

Further studies demonstrated this effect in humans but showed that the ‘breaking point’ varies depending on the type of task

We see this effect in athletic performance

When a tennis player is about to make an important serve, a degree of tension will sharpen their focus and improve their performance – they may serve an ace

However if the player gets too stressed out, they’ll lose concentration and perform worse – they may double fault

If I miss this, that’s the end of my

tournament…

Performance

Stress

Too much stress – performance deteriorates

Increasing stress – performance improves

A swimmer about to race 50m is harder to ‘stress out’

Their task is direct and uncomplicated – swim as fast as they can

Let’s do this!

Performance

Stress

Tennis player

Swimmer

Optimum level of stress for peak performance

Conclusions

1. People performing simpler tasks can withstand a higher degree of stress before performance deteriorates

2. All tasks (and individuals) have an optimum point of stress at which performance will peak, beyond this point increasing stress hinders performance

Reference

Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit-formation Robert Mearns Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson 1908 Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology