Yerkes-Dodson Law

Makena Douglas

Motor Behavior PEP 360

Professor Joshua Bailey

April 20, 2020

 If you have ever competed before in your life, then you probably understand what it’s
like to get amped up before the competition. This is a good thing for you because you end up
doing performing much better than you usually do in practice—except for the times when it goes
disastrously wrong. You false start, fumble the ball, or forget an entire section of your speech,
but why does this happen?

One theory is called the Yerkes-Dodson law. It describes the relationship between arousal
level and performance as an inverted U-shape (Teigen, 1994). Task difficulty is another factor
that can play into the outcome of performance as well. This first came about in 1908 on accident
through a series of experiments to get rats to perform a desired behavior (Teigen, 1994). Yerkes
and Dodson noticed that at a moderate intensity of electrical shock the rats learned the habit
formation the best, contrary to their hypothesis that the rats would perform better as the intensity
of the shock increased (Teigen, 1994). Almost 100 years later another study was done to
compare arousal state to time to complete a simple task. Participants were assigned to one of 8
test groups that would get them to a certain percent of their maximum heart rate by biking, and
then they were to perform an easy task (Arent & Landers, 2003). The results aligned with
previous conclusions of Yerkes and Dodson and at around 60-70% of max arousal the
participants performed the best and that arousal accounted for 14.8% of the variance among task
completion times (Arent & Landers, 2003).

In this more recent study, there was attention brough to the difference between arousal
and anxiety--two terms which have been used interchangeably in the past. A more traditional
view states that: arousal is measured on a scale of high to low with both positive and negative
associated feelings. High arousal is thought of as excitement or anxiety and low is considered
relaxation or boredom (Jones, 1995). The important difference to not is that anxiety is a negative
emotional state, where arousal is the body being ready for action (Arent & Landers, 2003). It is
hard to differentiate the terms because there is cross over of emotions, and motivation also being
involved with arousal (Teigen, 1994).

So how does this actually theory play into sports? As a former track athlete, I will be
exploring how this theory can help to explain race time performance in the 100-meter hurdles.
For example, if you just woke up from a nap, your arousal level will be too low, this will lead to
slow response times and your overall performance will not be good. If you have been warming
up, stretching and doing some drills before your race you will most likely be at optimal arousal
level—60-70% (Arent & Landers, 2003). Now the other extreme is being super nervous and
hyper before starting the race. Many times, in track the outcome of this is a false start, and then
you have to re set the blocks. Now this person absolutely cannot false start again or they will be
disqualified, so the pressure is on. Often times you will over compensate for this and have a very
slow start because you mind is so preoccupied with thoughts of not starting before the gun goes
off. These high levels of arousal lead to restriction of what feedback or information that can be
process by the brain. (Hanoch & Vitouch, 2004). Your ability to effectively carry out
information processing, decision making, and then performance is affected because you cannot
focus on the vital information (Hanoch & Vitouch, 2004). Faller et al., confirms that being able
to make these decisions in a real world, dynamic environment depends on state of arousal
(2019). The feedback information is especially important in untrained conditions. These
untrained conditions could be rainy weather, wind, or being on a different track for competitions
—which is usually the case.

Anxiety is also responsible for playing a role in arousal state of an athlete. Somatic
anxiety is defined as being the physical feelings of being anxious like tension or shakiness
(Jones, 1995). Cognitive anxiety takes an emotional toll on an athlete and can affect their
concentration and level of worriedness (Smith et al., 2005). According to an article cited in
Smith et al., “Concentration disruption was the strongest negative predictor of performance in
college football players” (2006, p.480). Although this a different sport, it still illustrates how big
of an impact anxiety has on arousal and therefore performance. Additionally, the competitive
state of anxiety also includes self-confidence (Jones, 1995). This can be seen in the hurdle race
because hitting a hurdle and falling dramatically effects your self-confidence for the rest of the
race, the flowing practices, and possibly even the next competition. It is unheard-of to achieve
your personal record time shortly after falling.

You also must keep in mind that the level of the task difficulty also plays a role in overall
performance. For example, going over one hurdle in practice is an easy task, whereas going over
10 hurdles, having a gunshot start, potentially different weather conditions, and competitors
makes the task much more difficult. In general, it is thought that difficult task is performed better
under circumstances of lower arousal, and easy tasks are completed better with a higher arousal
state. This is due to the fact that: “increased motivation will improve performance up to a point,
beyond which there is deterioration. The easier the task is to perform, the higher the drive level
for optimal performance” ( Bourne & Ekstrand, 1973, p.480, as cited in Teigen). Since running a
hurdle race is a difficult task, you would want your arousal sate to decrease after doing easy
warmups in order to hit that optimal range for competition.

This theory has been around for over a century, and there has been a lot of debate about
whether or not it is a valid theory. It has been used in several fields including sports performance
and psychology. Many sports psychology researchers are challenging the traditional inverted U-
shaped graph that represents the relationship between arousal and performance to be more
“multidimensional” (Arent & Landers, 2003). This multidimensional view incorporates the
components of cognitive, and somatic anxiety into arousal. There is a dynamic relationship that
have move the inverted-U graph more to the right or left depending on characteristics of each
individual (Arent & Landers, 2003). It has also been stated that the Yerkes-Dodson law is too
simplistic to describe the complex relationship between cognitive function and emotional arousal
(Hanoch & Vitouch, 2004). While there may be some debate about the logistics of the theory it
still provides an interesting angle on the relationship between arousal and performance.
 Overall, you can use the Yerkes Dodson theory to help improve performance by
understanding the difficulty of the task and if it will be performed in a trained environment.
Based on these factors you can determine what percent of maximum arousal will yield the best
performance. According to the theory it will be somewhere within the moderate range, but can
vary slightly. It can help explain how we can optimize performance during stressful situations
like sporting competitions or public speaking.
 References

Arent, S. M., & Landers, D. M. (2003). Arousal, anxiety, and performance: A reexamination of

the inverted-U hypothesis. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 74(4), 436-44.

doi:http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2153/10.1080/02701367.2003.10609113

Chaby, L. E., Sheriff, M. J., Hirrlinger, A. M., & Braithwaite, V. A. (2015). Can we understand

how developmental stress enhances performance under future threat with the Yerkes

Dodson law?. Communicative & integrative biology, 8(3), e1029689.

Faller, J., Cummings, J., Saproo, S., & Sajda, P. (2019). Regulation of arousal via online

neurofeedback improves human performance in a demanding sensory-motor task.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(13),

6482. doi:http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:2153/10.1073/pnas.1817207116

Hanoch, Y., & Vitouch, O. (2004). When less is more: Information, Emotional Arousal and the

Ecological Reframing of the Yerkes-Dodson Law. Theory & Psychology, 14(4), 427

452. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354304044918

Jones, Graham. (1995). More than just a game: research developments and issues in competitive

anxiety in sport. British Journal of Psychology, 86(4), 449–478.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1995.tb02565.x

Smith, Ronald E., Smoll, Frank L., Cumming, Sean P., & Grossbard, Joel R.(2006).Measurement

of multidimensional sport performance anxiety in children and adults: The Sport Anxiety

Scale-2. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 28(4), 479–501.

https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.28.4.479

Teigen, K. H. (1994). Yerkes-Dodson: A Law for all Seasons. Theory & Psychology, 4(4), 525

547. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354394044004