The Yerkes-Dodson law is a theory that says there is an “inverted U” relationship between how excited you are and how well you perform a task (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908). This theory was first discovered by studying rats who were given electric shocks to run through a maze. The theory was later applied to humans doing different tasks, like sports. The theory shows that if you are too calm or too excited, you won’t do as well as you would if you were moderately excited. If you are too calm, you might not notice important things around you, and if you are too excited, you might get distracted and make mistakes. The Yerkes-Dodson law also shows that different tasks require different levels of excitement, and everyone has a unique level of excitement that helps them perform their best. The Yerkes-Dodson law is not a guarantee, but rather a way to estimate how well you might do under different levels of excitement (Tenenbaum, 2019).
References
Tenenbaum, G. (2019) In D. Hackfort, R. J. Schinke, & B. Strauss (Eds.), Dictionary of sport psychology: Sport, exercise, and performing arts (p. 1). Academic Press
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, 459482.
