The Yerkes-Dodson Law and Performance

Have you ever noticed you perform better when you are a little bit nervous? For example, you might perform better at an athletic event you are excited about participating in or do better on an exam if you are anxious about your score.

The Yerkes-Dodson law in psychology suggests elevated arousal levels can improve performance. Keep reading to learn why a little bit of stress can actually help you perform your best.

How the Law Works

The Yerkes-Dodson Law suggests there is a relationship between performance and arousal. Increased arousal can help improve performance up to a certain point. At the point when arousal becomes excessive, performance diminishes.

The law was first described in 1908 by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson. They discovered mild electrical shocks could be used to motivate rats to complete a maze but, when the electrical shocks became too strong, the rats would begin scurrying in random directions to escape.

The anxiety you experience before an exam is one example of how the Yerkes-Dodson Law operates. An optimal level of stress can help you focus on the test and remember the information you studied, but too much test anxiety can impair your ability to concentrate and make it more difficult to remember the correct answers.

Athletic performance offers another great example of the Yerkes-Dodson Law. When a player is poised to make an important move, like making a basket during a basketball game, an ideal level of arousal can sharpen their performance and enable them to make the shot. When a player gets too stressed out, however, they may get nervous and miss the shot instead.

Observations

So, how do you determine what arousal level makes you perform best? It is key to remember optimal arousal levels vary from one situation to the next.

If you are performing a relatively simple task, you are capable of dealing with a much larger range of arousal levels. Household tasks such as doing laundry or loading the dishwasher are less likely to be affected by either very low or very high arousal levels.

If your arousal levels are too low, you might find yourself drifting off or even falling asleep before you get started on the assignment. Arousal levels that are too high can also be problematic, as they may make it difficult to concentrate long enough to complete the task.

Too much and too little arousal can also affect athletic performance. While a basketball or baseball player might need to control excessive arousal to concentrate on successfully performing complex plays, a track sprinter might rely on high arousal levels to motivate peak performance.

In such cases, the type of task and complexity of the task play a role in determining the optimal levels of arousal.