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Social Psychology /  Inverted-U Theory

The Yerkes-Dodson Law

and Performance
By Charlotte Nickerson, published Nov 15, 2021

The concept of optimal arousal in relation to performance on a task is depicted

here. Performance is maximized at the optimal level of arousal, and it tapers off

during under- and overarousal.

Key Takeaways
The Yerkes-Dodson law states that there is an empirical
relationship between stress and performance, and that Anxiety Psychologist
there is an optimal level of stress corresponding to an
optimal level of performance. Generally, practitioners
present this relationship as an inverted U-shaped curve. VISIT SITE
Research shows that moderate arousal is generally best;
when arousal is very high or very low, performance tends
to suffer (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908).
Robert Yerkes (pronounced “Yerk-EES”) and John Ad

Dodson discovered that the optimal arousal level depends

on the complexity and difficulty of the task to be
performed.
This relationship is known as Yerkes-Dodson law, which
holds that a simple task is performed best when arousal
levels are relatively high and complex tasks are best
performed when arousal levels are lower.
The Yerkes-Dodson law’s original formulation derives
from a 1908 paper on experiments in Japanese dancing
mice learning to discriminate between white and black
boxes using electric shocks. This research was largely
ignored until the 1950s, when Hebb’s concept of arousal
and the “U-shaped curve” led to renewed interest in the
Yerkes-Dodson law’s general applications in human
arousal and performance.
The Yerkes-Dodson law has more recently drawn criticism
for its poor original experimental design and it's over-
extrapolated scope to personality, managerial practices,
and even accounts of the reliability of eyewitness
testimony.

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How the Law Works

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The Yerkes-Dodson law describes the empirical relationship
For You
between stress and performance. In particular, it posits that
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performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but
only up to a certain point. This is also known as the inverted-U
model of arousal.

When stress gets too high, performance decreases. To add more

nuance, the shape of the stress-performance curve varies based on
the complexity and familiarity of the task.

Task performance is best when arousal levels are in a middle range,

with difficult tasks best performed under lower levels of arousal
and simple tasks best performed under higher levels of arousal.

Original Experiments
The Yerkes-Dodson law has seen a number of interpretations since
its inception in 1908. In their original paper, Robert Yerkes and
John Dodson reporteed the results of two experiments involving
“discrimination learning” - the ability to respond differently to
different stimuli - and dancing mice (Teigen, 1994).

The mice received a non-injurious electric shock whenever they

entered a white box, but no shock when they entered the black box
next to the white box.

In the first set of experiments, Yerkes and Dodson gave the mice
very weak shocks; however, they found that these mice took two
long to learn the habit of choosing the black box over the white box
(choosing correctly 10/10 times over three consecutive days).

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When the researchers increased the strength of the shock, the

number of trials needed for the mice to learn the habit decreased -
until they reached the third and strongest level of electric shock.

When the electric shock was at its strongest, the number of trials
needed for the mice to learn which box to enter went up again. This
finding went against Yerkes and Dodson' hypothesis that the rate of
habit-formation would increase linearly with the increasing
strength of the electric shock.

Instead, a degree of stimulation neither too weak nor too strong

optimized the rate of learning (Yerkes and Dodson, 1908; Teigan,
1994).

Because of this unexpected result, Yerkes and Dodson elaborated

on their original experimental design to provide “a more exact and
thoroughgoing examination of the relation of strength of stimulus
to rapidity of learning” (1908).

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The researchers made it easier to discriminate between the white

and black boxes by letting more light into the white box and used
five, rather than three, levels of shock.

Contrary to what we now know as the Yerkes-Dodson law, the

weakest stimulus gave the slowest rate of learning, while the
strongest stimulus led to the fastest rate of learning.

This confused Yerkes and Dodson, who wrote, “The results of the
second set of experiments contradict those of the first set. What
does this mean?” (1908).

One hypothesis the researchers made was that these contradictory

results came from the easiness of the discrimination task. To test
this hypothesis, Yerkes and Dodson made the discrimination task
more difficult than in the first set of experiments by allowing less
light into the white and black boxes.

The researchers used four levels of shock, but fewer mice in each
condition than before - two, rather than four. In this set of
experiments, the most efficient learning seemingly occured at the
second-weakest shock level (Teigen, 1994).

From these three sets of experiments, Yerkes and Dodson

concluded that both weak and strong stimuli can result in low rates
of habit formation, and that the stimulus level most conducive to
learning depended on the nature of the task.

“As the difficultness of discrimination is increased, the strength of

that stimulus which is most favorable to habit-formation
approaches the threshold” (Yerkes and Dodson, 1908; Teigen,
1994).

Replication Studies
Following the original formulation of the Yerkes-Dodson law,
researchers replicated the original study, using animals such as
chicks (Cole, 1911) and kittens (Dodson, 1915).

Cole (1911) gave chicks an easy, medium, and difficuklt

discrimination task, with four levels of shock for the medium task,
and three levels of shock for the other tasks.

In the easy task, the rapidity of learning increased with the strength
of shock; in the medium-difficulty task, the strongest shock
seemingly decreasd the rate of learning, and in the difficult task,
the strong shock increased the variability of performance - three
chicks learned more rapidly due to the strong shock, while two
others failed to learn the discrimination task (the sixth chick died
over the course of the experiment).

Although Cole (1911) only observed one U-curve (in the medium-
difficulty condition), he concluded that his results were in
agreement with Yerkes-Dodson.

Dodson (1915), meanwhile, trained four kittens to discriminate

between a light and dark colored box by giving them a “medium-
strength” shock when they entered the darker box.

These kittens performed better at the discrimination task than

those given a “strong” electric shock. When the task was made
easier (again, by letting more light into the boxes), the strong and
medium-strength shocks proved equally effective. With an easier
task, learning improved with shock strength (Teigen, 1994).

Dodson himself later found that both the strength of rewards and
punishments were related to the rapidity of learning in a U-shaped
manner.

For example, rats who had been starved for up to 41 hours prior to
the experiment showed higher rates of discrimination learning
than those who were not. However, if they were starved longer (and
food was more rewarding as a result), learning became less efficient
(Dodson, 1917).

Later scholars generally agreed that the Yerkes-Dodson law was

about the relationship between punishment and learning.

Young (1936), following a review of the research of Yerkes and

Dodson (1908), Cole (1911), and Dodson (1915), added a later,
confounding study by Vaughn and Diserens (1930) showing that
maze-learning was more efficient in human subjects given either
light or medium punishments in the form of electric shocks, but
not with heavy punishment or no punishment.

To quote Young, “For the learning of every activity, there is an

optimum degree of punishment” (1936). The 1930s and 1940s saw
an evolution for the Yerkes-Dodson law.

Writers such as Thorndike (1932), Skinner (2019), and Estes

(1944) did away with the idea of punishment as a fundamental
learning principle, and others introduced a distinction between
learning and performance (Teigen, 1994).

Researchers reinterpreted the Yerkes-Dodson law as describing the

relationship between motivation and performance. Some, such as
Hilgard and Marquis (1961), concluded that the law was evidence
that “under certain conditions, drive may actually interfere” with
learning. Introductory textbooks as well as scholars on the subject
have described the Yerkes-Dodson law in terms of motivation and
performance (e.g. Bourne and Ekstrand, 1973).

In these descriptions, the Yerkes-Dodson law has become more

about motivated behavior in general than the psychology of
learning.

The shape described by the Yerkes-Dodson law has also changed

from U-curves to the inverted U: while learning (as measured by
the number of trials needed for mastery) is optimal at the lowest
point of a U-curve (the least trials needed), performance is optimal,
at its highest, at the highest point of the inverted U-curve.

This expansion in scope, it has been argued, renewed interest in the

Yerkes-Dodson law from 1955 to 1960 (Teigen, 1994).

Broadhurst (1957) replicated the original Yerkes-Dodson

experiment with better design through using four motivation levels
and three difficulty levels with 10 rats in each condition.

Again, the rats had to discriminate between light and dark boxes,
but they were motivated by different levels of air deprivation 0, 2,
4, or 8 seconds. For the easy discrimination task, the highest
performance was seen in the 4-second air deprivation group, while
the optimum moved to 2 seconds for the medium and difficult task
groups.

Broadhurst also proposed testing motivational differences in

individual rats by conducting the experiment in rats differing in
“emotionality” (Broadhurst, 1957; Teigen, 1994).

Examples
Eyewitness Testimony

Expert witnesses have cited the Yerkes-Dodson law in court. In

the work, Witness for the defense: The accused, the eyewitness,
and the expert who puts memory on trial, Elizabeth Loftus, a
psychologist and expert witness in memory and the fallibility of
memory, eyewitness testimony explains, “I approached the
backboard located in front of the jury box and with a piece of
chalk drew the upside-down U shape that represented the
relationship between stress and memory known to
psychologists as the Yerkes-Dodson law” (Loftus and Ketcham,
1991).

Although this curve bore more similarity to Hebb’s inverted U-

curve of arousal, Loftus used the curve to relate arousal (or
“stress”) to the efficiency of memory (rather than, as has been
formulated by others, learning, performance, problem-solving,
efficiency of coping, or another concept).

The Yerkes-Dodson effect states that when anxiety is at low

and high levels, eyewitness testimony is less accurate than if
anxiety is at a medium level. Recall improves as anxiety
increases up to an optimal point and then declines.

When we are in a state of anxiety, we tend to focus on whatever

is making us feel anxious or fearful, and we exclude other
information about the situation. If a weapon is used to threaten
a victim, their attention is likely to focus on it. Consequently,
their recall of other information is likely to be poor.

Work Stress

The Yerkes-Dodson law has seen frequent citations in

managerial psychology, particularly as researchers have argued
that the increase in work stress level is a “costly disaster”
(Corbett, 2015).

Corbett (2015) examines the lineage of this law in business

writing and questions its application, calling it a “folk method.”

In particular, Corbett criticizes how the law has been

extrapolated from its initially limited animal experiments to
almost every facet of human task performance, with studies
examining tasks as unrelated as product development
teamwork, the piloting aircraft, competing in sports, and
solving complex cognitive puzzles.

This has proved, Corbett argues, to create a situation where the

law has become so ambiguous as to be unfalsifiable (2015).
Corbett argues that the generally uncritical portrayal of the
Yerkes-Dodson law in textbooks has added a veneer of
scientific legitimacy to the management practice of increasing
work stress levels at a time when more robust research is
increasingly showing that increasing levels of work-related
stress corresponds to decreasing mental and physical health.

Corbett, taking an argument from Micklethwait and

Wooldridge (1996) posits that management theory is generally
incapable of self-criticism, has confusing terminology, rarely
“rises above common sense,” and is riddled with contradictions
(2015).

In response, he suggests that managerial psychology embraces

evidence-based managerial practices.

Arousal and Performance

The renewal of interest in the Yerkes-Dodson law in the 1950s
corresponded to the introduction of the concept of arousal (Teigen,
1994).

Hebb (1955), who wrote seminally on the concept of arousal,

introduced the inverted U-curve to describe the relationship
between arousal and performance.

This idea of arousal shifted the idea of “drive” from the body to the
brain, and could be framed as either a behavioral, physiological, or
theoretical concept. Although not referenced in Hebb’s original
paper, writers continued to describe the Yerkes-Dodson law in
terms of arousal in textbooks and research literature (Teigen,
1994).

These reformulations of the Yerkes-Dodson law have used terms

such as fear, anxiety, emotionality, tension, drive, and arousal
interchangeably. For example, Levitt (2015) holds that the Yerkes-
Dodson law describes “that the relationship between fear,
conceptualized as drive, and learning is curvilinear,” reporting
findings on human maze learning as support for his view.

Using the arousal concept in the formulation of the Yerkes-Dodson

law has also seen the law being linked to phenomena such as
personality traits and the effects of physiological stimulants, such
as in accounting for the theoretical differences in intellectual
performance between introverts and extroverts under time
pressure, different noise conditions, and at different times of day
(e.g. Revelle, Amaral, and Turriff, 1976; Geen, 1984; and Matthews,
1985) as well as participants differing in impulsivity working under
the influence of caffeine (e.g. Anderson and Revelle, 1983).

Critical Evaluation
Yerkes and Dodsons’ original experimental design, scholars
generally agree, was deeply flawed by modern standards - so much
so that W. P. Brown wrote that the law should be “buried in
silence” (Teigen, 1994; W. P. Brown, 1965).

Yerkes and Dodsons’ performance vs. stimulus curves were based

on averages from just 2-4 subjects per conditions, the researchers
performed no statistical tests (Gigerenzer and Murray, 2015), and
the highest level of shock used in 3, 4, and 5 shock conditions were
of different strengths.

The authors assumed that the linear response curve in the second
set of experiments (with the easily-discriminated white and black
boxes) was simply the first part of a U-curve which would have
been fully uncovered given that they had subjected the mice to
higher levels of shocks (Teigen, 1994).

Indeed, this experimental design has been misreported upon by

later scholars, such as Winton (1987), who described the original
study as a 3 x 3 design with three different levels of discrimination
difficulty and three levels of shock strength.

Additionally, the Yerkes and Dodson, as Teigen (1994) points out,

failed to discuss the concepts involved in the speed of habit-
formation. Several of the original replicating studies, such as
Dodson’s kitten experiment (1915), also showed poor experimental
design.

In this experiment, there were only two kittens in the “less

difficult” and “easy” discrimination conditons, and no U-curves.
Nonetheless, Dodson concluded that the results were compatible
with the original Yerkes-Dodson experiment (Teigen, 1994).

About the Author

Charlotte Nickerson is a member of the Class of 2024 at Harvard
University. Coming from a research background in biology and
archeology, Charlotte currently studies how digital and physical
space shapes human beliefs, norms, and behaviors and how this
can be used to create businesses with greater social impact.

How to reference this article:

Nickerson, C. (2021, Nov 15). Yerkes-Dodson Law. Simply
Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-the-yerkes-
dodson-law.html

References
Anderson, K. J., & Revelle, W. (1983). The interactive effects of
caffeine, impulsivity and task demands on a visual search task.
Personality and Individual Differences, 4(2), 127-134.

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Bourne, L. E., & Ekstrand, B. R. (1973). Psychology: Its principles

and meanings (Dryden, Hinsdale, IL).

Broadhurst, P. L. (1957). Emotionality and the Yerkes-Dodson law.

Journal of experimental psychology, 54(5), 345.

Brown, W. P. (1965). The Yerkes-Dodson law repealed.

Psychological reports, 17(2), 663-666.

Cole, L. W. (1911). The relation of strength of stimulus to rate of

learning in the chick. Journal of Animal Behavior, 1(2), 111.

Corbett, M. (2015). From law to folklore: work stress and the

Yerkes-Dodson Law. Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Dodson, J. D. (1915). The relation of strength of stimulus to

rapidity of habit-formation in the kitten. Journal of Animal
Behavior, 5(4), 330.

Dodson, J. D. (1917). Relative values of reward and punishment in

habit formation. Psychobiology, 1(3), 231.

Estes, W. K. (1944). An experimental study of punishment.

Psychological Monographs, 57(3), i.

Geen, R. G. (1984). Preferred stimulation levels in introverts and

extroverts: Effects on arousal and performance. Journal of
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Gigerenzer, G., & Murray, D. J. (2015). Cognition as intuitive