The ObservatoryThe stress curve
What happens in the body under stress, and where the line runs between what sharpens you and what breaks you down
How it works
- The curveChoose
- Acute and chronicRate
Arousal is not simply bad or good. It is a curve. Too little and you lose focus. Just right and you perform at your best. Too much and everything falls apart. It is called the Yerkes-Dodson law, one of psychology's oldes …
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Why does it work?
The Yerkes-Dodson relationship between arousal and performance is an established basic model in stress research (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908): a rough description, not an exact curve for each person or task. The time course of cortisol in acute stress follows recurring patterns in laboratory studies of acute psychosocial stress; individual variation is large.
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