Describes the relationship between performance and arousal/stress with an inverse-U curve: increased arousal improves performance to a certain point, after which increased stress worsens performance.
Factors that shift the position of this U-curve include: (1) the difficulty of the task (2) how easily the individual becomes stressed (3) previous experience with the task being performed.
Insight: Incentives can be a double edged sword - they can motivate us to a cetain point - beyond which the pressure becomes too much and becomes a distraction.
Insight: Generally, the inverse-U relationship between stress and performance of the Yerkes-Dodson Law holds.
Insight: Additional factors on the relationship between stress and performance include (1) the difficulty of the task (2) how easily someone becomes stressed (3) how much experience someone has with a particular tasks (prior knowledge about how much effort is required).
Reference: Yerkes and Dodson performed experiments on rats to find out (1) how fast they could learn (2) what intensity of electric shocks would motivate them to learn fastest.
Reference: Yerkes and Dodson found that low intensity shocks did not motivate rats, medium shocks motivated them to learn, very high intensity shocks caused the rats to perform worse as they could not focus from fear.
Definition: Stress can enhance learning on easy tasks, but will impair learning on more difficult tasks.
Insight: Complex tasks require a lot of energy from the brain including working memory, executive processing, decision-making, and attention. Stress impairs the functioning of the prefrontal cortex - where we do our thinking - and the hippocampus - responsible for complex problem solving.
Insight: We might have the mental capacity but stress can make it challenging to put everything together.
Reference: In 1905 Robert Yerkes and John Dodson studied stress in mice. The put mice into a box wired with electricity. They found that learning in mice increased with the intensity of electric shocks on simple tasks, but declined with intense shocks on more difficult tasks.
Insight: When stress is low we often have nothing driving us - no immediate deadlines for example.
Insight: When stress rises we often rise to the challenge.
Insight: Positive stress is called "eustress" - it can help us focus.
Insight: Continuous stress can turn eustress into distress.
Insight: The longer we are in stressful conditions we start to experience negative effects including declining focus.
Insight: Arousal level is predictive of performance on difficult tasks
Insight: High levels of arousal prevent us from being able to perform on difficult tasks.
Insight: Optimal performance requires an optimal level of arousal - not too much stress, not too little.
Insight: People require some level of arousal, or stress, for good performance.
Insight: The Yerkes-Dodson Law is represented by an inverse-U curve - the height being performance and the X-axis representing stress.
Insight: Arousal can be positive (feeling alert after exercise) or negative (highly stressed) for performance.
Principle: Take breaks to walk or work on simpler tasks
Definition: The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that maximum motivation occurs when challenges are manageable in difficulty.
Insight: The optimal level of arousal for performance is a midpoint between boredom and anxiety.
Definition: The inverse-U shape of arousal verses performance - performance increases with stress, until a point (dependent on the difficulty of the task at hand).
Insight: Focus starts to suffer with too much arousal.
Insight: Increased stress can improve performance on simple tasks.
Key Insights & Principles
Stress & Performance
Optimal arousal is a midpoint between boredom and anxiety.
Stress can enhance learning and performance on easy tasks, but impairs performance on difficult tasks.
The complexity of tasks determines the energy and focus required to perform them, adding stress increases the level of energy depleted, and focus will suffer.
Low arousal can mean low motivation to perform.
Continued stress, even if low, can turn into distress over time.
Manage arousal by engaging or disengaging from activities - increase physical exercise to increase alertness, or take a break from difficult mental tasks to reduce stress.
