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arousal
You perform better when you are slightly stressed.
The Yerkes-Dodson law describes an inverted-U relationship between stimulus strength and learning performance, originally observed in mice.
The original study utilized electrical shocks as stimuli in mice, not physiological arousal or human anxiety; the optimal level of stimulus varies based on task complexity.
You are either undertuned or overwhelmed, rarely perfectly balanced.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Yerkes and Dodson, 1908, Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology
- What the check found
- The law is often mischaracterized as a general rule for human stress; it is an inverted-U relationship between stimulus intensity and performance speed in mice, which varies by task difficulty.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.