“I am excited”: Making Stress Work for You, Instead of Against You

Image: The Yerkes-Dodson Law (YDL) — How much stress is good for you? In 1908, Robert Mearns Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson designed an experiment that would begin to tackle the question, “How much stress is good for you?” The researchers tracked mice to see how stress would affect their ability to learn. Simple—yet painful, because how do you stress out mice? You shock them. The researchers set up two corridors to choose from—one painted white and the other black—and if a mouse went down the black corridor, ZAP! Yerkes and Dodson observed that given too mild a shock, the mice just shrugged it off and kept on keepin’ on—no biggie if they made the same mistake again. Too big a jolt, and the stress left them too frazzled too figure out what had just happened and how to make that not happen again. Those who learned most quickly—indeed, those mice that might need half as much time to learn which corridor to take—did it Goldilocks style: the size of their shock was juuuuust right. You may not be a mouse, but research shows that you learn like one. Not that we are suggesting self-electrocution (to do so would be highly unethical—fascinating, but highly unethical). But a just-right dose of stress can lead to your peak performance. Ed Ehlinger of the University of Minnesota studied almost 10,000 students and found that those who couldn’t manage their stress (32 percent of them) had a 0.5 drop in their GPA compared to their less-stressed-out peers. Imagine ...
Source: SharpBrains - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Education & Lifelong Learning Health & Wellness Peak Performance Professional Development ability ability to learn alertness anxiety mind physiology Stress work Yerkes-Dodson Law Source Type: blogs