Yerkes–Dodson Law

The 1908 experiment and the law

In 1908, Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson trained "dancing mice" to discriminate between white and black passages, delivering weak, moderate or strong electric shocks for wrong choices. Learning was fastest with moderate shocks and slower with shocks that were too weak or too strong. When the brightness difference was reduced to make the task harder, the optimal shock intensity fell. These are the two core claims: first, there is an inverted-U relationship between stimulus (motivational) strength and performance; second, the optimum depends on task difficulty, with harder tasks performed best at lower arousal and easier tasks at higher arousal. The original paper did not use the term "arousal"; Donald Hebb (1955) linked the results to arousal theory. Broadhurst (1957) reconfirmed the task-difficulty effect with rats in an underwater maze.

Explanations and applications

Why an inverted U? Easterbrook's (1959) "cue utilization hypothesis" holds that rising arousal narrows attention, first filtering out irrelevant cues and improving performance but eventually excluding relevant ones. Daniel Kahneman (1973) saw arousal as regulating the supply of attentional resources. In neuroscience, Aston-Jones and Cohen (2005) proposed that moderate locus coeruleus–norepinephrine activity optimizes task engagement, and Arnsten (2009) showed that excessive stress signaling impairs the prefrontal cortex, which supports working memory. Diamond et al. (2007) reported inverted-U relationships in emotional memory processing. In sport psychology, Hanin's (1980) "individual zones of optimal functioning" model holds that optimal anxiety differs across athletes, and Hardy's (1987) "catastrophe model" argues that with high cognitive anxiety, performance drops sharply rather than gradually once arousal passes a threshold. The law is often cited in research on test anxiety, work stress and flow.

Critiques and reappraisal

Teigen (1994) noted that the law has been reinterpreted in each era, becoming "a law for all seasons." The original experiment used small samples and lacked statistical testing and concerned animals' learning speed and punishment intensity, yet it was later extended to human arousal, anxiety, stress and performance in general. Corbett (2015) criticized management textbooks for simplifying it, without original support, into the claim that "moderate stress improves performance." Critics also note that arousal is hard to measure on a single dimension and that an inverted U can explain almost any result after the fact, making it hard to falsify. Meanwhile, Jamieson et al. (2010) showed that reappraising arousal as helpful rather than threatening improved test scores, suggesting that interpretation matters, not just the amount of arousal. Still, the law remains a basic framework for the relationship between stress and performance.

FAQ

What is the Yerkes–Dodson law in simple terms?

You perform poorly when too relaxed or too tense and best when moderately alert. For difficult tasks, being somewhat calmer is better.

Is moderate stress always good?

It is not that simple. The optimal level varies by task and person, and because the original study concerned mice learning, the generalization that moderate stress boosts performance is contested.

Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26

References

1. Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482.
2. Hebb, D. O. (1955). Drives and the C.N.S. (conceptual nervous system). Psychological Review, 62(4), 243–254.
3. Broadhurst, P. L. (1957). Emotionality and the Yerkes–Dodson law. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54(5), 345–352.
4. Easterbrook, J. A. (1959). The effect of emotion on cue utilization and the organization of behavior. Psychological Review, 66(3), 183–201.
5. Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and Effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
6. Hanin, Y. L. (1980). A study of anxiety in sports. In W. F. Straub (Ed.), Sport Psychology: An Analysis of Athlete Behavior (pp. 236–249). Ithaca, NY: Mouvement.
7. Hardy, L., & Fazey, J. (1987). The inverted-U hypothesis: A catastrophe for sport psychology? Paper presented at the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity.
8. Teigen, K. H. (1994). Yerkes–Dodson: A law for all seasons. Theory & Psychology, 4(4), 525–547.
9. Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422.
10. Aston-Jones, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2005). An integrative theory of locus coeruleus–norepinephrine function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 28, 403–450.
11. Diamond, D. M., Campbell, A. M., Park, C. R., Halonen, J., & Zoladz, P. R. (2007). The temporal dynamics model of emotional memory processing. Neural Plasticity, 2007, 60803.
12. Corbett, M. (2015). From law to folklore: Work stress and the Yerkes–Dodson law. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 30(6), 741–752.
13. Jamieson, J. P., Mendes, W. B., Blackstock, E., & Schmader, T. (2010). Turning the knots in your stomach into bows. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(1), 208–212.