It Can Be Good To Be Nervous: Yerkes Dodson at Work

The research I believe she was referring to is called the Yerkes-Dodson Law, and the reason I smiled when I read her article is because of the countless times I repeated a phrase based on Yerkes-Dodson to my children over the years – every time they were nervous about succeeding at something. I can hear myself responding to their statements or other noticeable displays of nervousness, "You're supposed to be nervous," I would tell them, as I finished with, "moderate anxiety yields best performance." I started when they were young, probably around 10 years of age. But, when you say something like that to people too young to understand it easily, of course it helps to provide an illustration. I used this one, because it helped me with something else I used to tell them (admittedly, I was sometimes relentless).

Picture a mouse in a maze. The maze has no top, so you can see the mouse move within it. In one corner, there is some delicious cheese, (it's not for you, it's for the mouse, you can have some when the experiment is done). You place the mouse in the other corner and let it go to find its way through the maze and eat your cheese – I mean its cheese. You remove the mouse. As far as the mouse is concerned, it's a walk in the park for some food. You change the maze up, put the cheese and mouse in again, and pretty soon the mouse has figured out the game – all it has to do is sniff, saunter (literally) and learn its way to 'cheesedom'. It's like you making your way from the apparatus bay to the kitchen when they call "Dinner up!"

You decide the mouse has it a bit too easy, so you decide to shake things up – you're going to start adding water to the maze after you put the mouse in. No big deal, thinks the mouse, I got this, and off it saunters, and learns, with wet feet (or is it paws?), to some wet cheese. (Okay, I actually looked up whether mice have feet or paws, expecting a simple answer – look it up, can't anything be simple anymore?) You're on a day off from firefighting, nothing better to do than science experiments, so you decide to add water to the maze more quickly. The mouse catches on – I better learn this maze and get to the cheese faster so I can get lifted outta here before this maze fills with water. Yikes. Off it goes, but now it's moving more quickly. Now, it's like you making your way from the apparatus bay to the kitchen when they call "Dessert up!"

Remember, this is a science experiment, so you're carefully timing how fast the water goes into the maze, and how fast the mouse is getting to the cheese. You start noticing something interesting – as you put the water in more quickly, the mouse reaches a point where it gets slower at reaching the cheese, and if you put the water in too quickly, the mouse pretty much gives up. You can't wait to tell the crew about your findings…when you take the mouse back to its home at the firehall next shift.

Next shift comes, you and the mouse are sitting with the crew for morning coffee (and cheese) at the firehall kitchen table and, for some reason, you're asked about your experiment. You tell the crew what you discovered, and pretty soon there's a crew theory. If mice can experience anxiety then there's a point before which increasing anxiety improves performance, and after which increasing anxiety diminishes performance. That point, what Sue Wells called the 'sweet spot' (she may have seen an experiment using chocolate instead of cheese), is where the amount of anxiety is resulting in the best performance.

You figure you got it made, you just made a great scientific discovery, but when you go to publish your findings in the best fire services publication (that would be us!), you learn that you were beat out by a couple of psychologists named Yerkes and Dodson, who developed a bell curve based on the very same concept – – in 1908! You're not discouraged, though, next thing you know you're using the Yerkes-Dodson Law to tell your kids that, "Moderate anxiety yields best performance," and before you know it, two of them are firefighters and the three of you are publishing a digital publication where you can now give the 'moderate anxiety' speech to other people's kids, mostly because yours aren't really listening to you like they used to anyway (expect an upcoming article on how firefighter's kids should always listen to their parents).

There are lessons for success everywhere in Yerkes-Dodson – testing in school; aptitude and agility testing to become a firefighter; preparing for an interview, especially a promotional interview; deciding how much you should take on of work that involves stress.

There's another important lesson here, I think. Psychological theories (in this case Law) are best when they're applied effectively and properly. You can use them to predict a behaviour (beforehand), explain a behaviour (afterword), and in combination with other theories in varying degrees across evolving situations.

For example, I can't recall how many times I've heard Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs used to explain someone's motivation. Pretty much all the time, the Hierarchy is treated as a static model. This person's at this level, that person's at another level.

I remember one of my graduate professors, Susan Duford, a remarkable teacher who retired out of Central Michigan University, discussing Maslow. She was pleased that we were all at the top of the Hierarchy 'self-actualizing away' as we pursued higher education, but, she reminded us, if she were to take a hammer (a small one, mind you), and use it on one of our toes, we would likely quickly find ourselves at the bottom of the Hierarchy in the 'Safety and Security' zone – and, presto, suddenly Maslow's Hierarchy became a dynamic model.

I'll put Maslow down for possible future editorial.

I've listed some related websites below.

Yerkes-Dodson Law: How It Correlates to Stress, Anxiety, Performance

The Yerkes-Dodson Law; the REAL reason you can't get stuff done! – YouTube