What Is the Yerkes-Dodson

Law?

A closer look at the relationship between arousal

levels and performance
By Kendra Cherry
Updated June 28, 2016

Yerkes-Dodson law suggests that elevated arousal levels can improve performance up to a
certain point. Learn more about how this works and why sometimes a little bit of stress can
actually help you perform your best.

A Closer Look at the Relationship between Arousal and Performance

Have you ever noticed that you perform better when you are just a little bit nervous? For
example, you might do better at an athletic event if you are excited about participating or do
better on an exam if you are somewhat anxious about your score.
In psychology, this relationship between arousal levels and performance is known as the
Yerkes-Dodson Law. What impact can this have on our behavior and performance?

How Does the Yerkes-Dodson Law Work?

The Yerkes-Dodson Law suggests that there is a relationship between performance and
arousal. Increased arousal can help improve performance, but only 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 that mild electrical shocks could be used to motivate rats to
complete a maze, but when the electrical shocks became too strong, the rats would scurry
around in random directions to escape. The experiment demonstrated that increasing stress
and arousal levels could help focus motivation and attention on the task at hand, but only up
to a certain point.
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 that you studied; 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 his performance and enable him to make the shot. When
a player gets too stressed out, he might instead "choke" and miss the shot.

A Observations About the Yerkes-Dodson Law

So how do you determine what arousal levels are ideal? The key thing to remember is that
this can vary from one task to the next. Research has found, for example, that performance
levels decrease earlier for complex tasks than for simple tasks even with the same levels of
arousal. What does this mean exactly? 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 you were doing a much more complex task, such as working on a paper for a class or
memorize difficult information, your performance would be much more heavily influenced
by low and high arousal levels.
If your arousal levels are too low, you might find yourself drifting off or even falling asleep
before you can even get started on the assignment. Arousal levels that are too high could be
just as problematic, making it difficult to concentrate on the information long enough to
complete the task.
Too much and too little arousal can also have an effect on different types of athletic
performance tasks. While a basketball player or baseball player might need to control
excessive arousal in order to concentrate on successfully performing complex throws or
pitches, 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.
Sources

Coon, D. & Mitterer, J. O. (2007). Introduction to psychology. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Hayes, N. (2000). Foundations of psychology, 3rd edition. London: Thomson Learning.