In this video I describe arousal theory, the Yerkes–Dodson law, and flow. Arousal theory suggests that there is an optimal level of arousal that we are motivated to maintain and that we will seek out activities that serve to raise or lower our arousal in order to reach this optimal level. The Yerkes–Dodson law refers to the idea that there is a level of arousal which corresponds to peak performance and that arousal below or above that level will hinder performance. Lastly I describe Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, which refers to a state of focus and absorption in a task that occurs when the level of challenge is matched with our level of skill.
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Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is Psych Exam Review. In this video we’re going to look at a few more theories related to motivation and these are arousal theory, the Yerkes-Dodson Law, and flow.
So we’ll start with arousal theory and if you watched my videos in the personality unit then you’re actually already familiar with the idea of arousal theory because I talked about the theory proposed by Hans Eysenck that introversion and extraversion could be explained by differences in cortical arousal. So this was a proposed biological explanation for why people differ in their level of introversion or extroversion. What Eysenck suggested was that extroverts had lower levels of cortical arousal and what this meant is that they were motivated to seek out more stimulation. They were more motivated to seek out things like social interaction that would increase their level of cortical arousal up to some more optimal state. Introverts, on the other hand, already have higher levels of cortical arousal what this means is that they’re not as motivated to seek out additional arousal. And so they’re less likely to seek out things like social stimulation because they’re already at some optimal level of cortical arousal.
So the idea of arousal theory is that we can apply this, not just to this difference in this personality trait, but to behavior in general. That we can think about some optimal state of arousal for a broad range of tasks and that if our arousal is too low then we’re going to be motivated to engage in behaviors that will increase arousal. And if our arousal is too high then we’ll be motivated to engage in behaviors that will help to reduce our level of arousal.
Now we could also think about how our level of arousal is associated with our performance on different tasks and so this brings us to what’s called the Yerkes Dodson Law. This is based on research by Robert Yerkes and John Dodson and the idea of the Yerkes Dodson law is that our peak performance will occur at a particular level of arousal and arousal that’s below that point will hinder performance and arousal that’s above that point will also hinder performance. So whether arousal is too low or too high both will result in impaired performance, whereas somewhere in the middle we’ll have an optimal level of arousal. Now this was based on research that Yerkes and Dodson did where they gave electric shocks to mice and they found that if they gave only weak shocks to the mice that the mice didn’t have their highest performance on the task but if they gave very strong electric shocks to the mice that also impaired the performance. But when they gave them moderate electric shocks they had the best level of performance.
Now, rather than thinking about giving yourself electric shocks, you might think about your own performance on something like an exam and the idea of the Yerkes Dodson law is it will have this inverted u-shaped curve, where we’re looking at our performance here on the y-axis and our level of arousal here on the x axis. And so the idea is that, let’s say you’re taking an exam, if your arousal is very low, you know, you’re falling asleep, you’re not going to do your best on the test, right? Similarly, if your arousal is extremely high, you’re probably not going to do your best either. Because here, you know, you’re second-guessing yourself, you’re extremely nervous, you’re shaking, you can’t concentrate, you’re distracted too easily. You’re really worried about what’s going to happen on the test; you’re probably not going to do your best. But somewhere in the middle there’s some optimal state of arousal that you need to find that is going to help you to get your highest level of performance.
Now, I should also note that Yerkes and Dodson didn’t always find this inverted u-shaped curve. This might often be the case, but for very simple tasks they actually found that your level of arousal could increase your performance almost continuously. In other words, if you’re doing something very, very simple then at higher and higher levels of arousal you get better and better and better at the task. But most of the time we’re going to think about more complex behaviors where you’re going to see something like this u-shaped curve.
Now a similar idea here is the idea of flow and this is the idea of trying to balance our level of arousal with our challenge of a task. So this is proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who’s a Hungarian psychologist, and he’s used uses the word “flow” to refer to this state of deep absorption and focus where we lose track of time and we’re, you know, only focused on a particular task. So it’s something that athletes might experience in competition or that musicians might experience during a performance, or people might experience in more mundane situations where they lose track of time; they’re solely focused on this task and it’s generally a very positive experience to have this flow experience.
What Csikszentmihalyi proposed is that this is about balancing the challenge and our skills. So if on one end we have a challenge that’s too low, or another way of saying that is that our skills are too high for that particular task, we’re really good in this area and so what we’re doing is is sort of easy for us, then we’ll experience boredom. On the other hand, the other extreme we could have a low level of skill relative to the tasks that we’re doing. So here the task is too hard for us, it’s too challenging, and when that happens we experience anxiety and frustration. But somewhere in the middle we find a way to get this perfect balance between the level of challenge of the task and our particular skills for performing that task. When that occurs we experience this flow state and it’s this enjoyable experience of losing track of time, becoming completely absorbed in the task that we’re doing.
And Csikszentmihalyi proposes that we should be trying to find flow as as much as we can in our lives; trying to balance challenge and skill in the optimal way. Alright, so that’s the idea of flow, the Yerkes-Dodson Law, and Arousal Theory. I hope you found this helpful, if so, please like the video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks for watching!
