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30. The Yerkes-Dodson Law
The Yerkes–Dodson law is usually presented as a simple inverted-U relationship: performance improves as arousal rises, reaches an optimal “sweet spot,” and then declines under excessive pressure.
The original 1908 paper did not actually test that relationship.
Robert Yerkes and John Dodson studied how electric-shock intensity affected the rate at which dancing mice learned a visual discrimination. Their results suggested that the most favorable shock intensity changed with the difficulty of the discrimination—but the study did not measure arousal, stress, anxiety, or the immediate performance…
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