Performance is said to rise with arousal to an optimal point and then decline, generalising a narrower original finding.
In Yerkes and Dodson's 1908 mouse-learning experiments, the shock intensity associated with fastest learning depended on how hard the discrimination was. The general inverted-U of arousal against performance is a later and much broader reinterpretation, not the original result.
In practice
- The optimum is task-dependent: simple tasks tolerate high arousal, complex ones peak much lower.
- Pressure helps a warehouse pick rate and destroys a diagnostic decision, which is why blanket exhortations to work under pressure damage the wrong work.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation offered is attention: moderate arousal narrows focus onto the task, and high arousal narrows it further, onto the threat rather than the work.
- In its favour
- The original result, that the best level of shock depended on the difficulty of the discrimination, was real, and the interaction with task difficulty survives in modern work on stress and performance.
- Against it
- The general inverted-U is a much broader reinterpretation of a narrow 1908 mouse experiment, arousal is not measured consistently across studies, and the curve is often invoked where no optimum has been demonstrated.
- Standing
- The general inverted-U is a later and much broader reinterpretation of a narrow 1908 result.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind