What Is The Yerkes-Dodson Law And Why Does It Matter In Therapy?

Many therapists will recognize a familiar clinical pattern: a perfectionistic client believes that more pressure and effort will lead to better performance. The Yerkes-Dodson law offers a useful counter-perspective. It suggests that performance is not simply improved by increasing stress or effort. Instead, performance improves with mental arousal only up to a point, after which additional stress becomes unnecessary – and even counterproductive.

What is the Yerkes-Dodson law?

The Yerkes-Dodson law (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) is a well-known (and somewhat controversial) finding in the psychology literature. In summary, the law suggests that performance increases with mental arousal (stress) but only up to a point. When an individual’s level of stress is too low or too high, their performance deteriorates. This relationship between stress and performance is usually depicted as an inverted U-shaped curve. In other words, an optimal level of stress can help people perform at their best, while too much stress can damage their performance.

Why does the Yerkes-Dodson law matter in therapy?

Sarah Egan and colleagues (2014) suggest that the Yerkes-Dodson law can be helpful to discuss with people struggling with perfectionism.

People with perfectionism pursue high standards in one or more areas of their life and base their self-worth on their ability to achieve these standards, despite this having negative consequences (Shafran et al., 2010). Perfectionism can arise in various life domains, including work, appearance, eating, relationships, and several others (Stoeber & Stoeber, 2009). Shafran and colleagues (2002) suggest that the perfectionism observed in clinical groups (referred to as ‘clinical perfectionism’) is associated with four key features:

• Setting excessively high standards for oneself

• Continuous striving to reach goals

• Basing self-worth on meeting these standards

• Significant distress or impairment arising from the features above

Egan and colleagues (2014) suggest that perfectionistic people tend to put more effort into things than they need to, and that they can often achieve the same results with less effort. If someone struggles with perfectionism, reducing the pressure they put on themselves can help them feel less overwhelmed without impacting on their performance.

The Yerkes-Dodson law also suggests that people have a “zone of optimal performance”, where the amount of pressure is just right and they get the best results from themselves. If someone tries to work beyond this optimal zone (by putting too much pressure on themselves to perform perfectly) it may actually lead them to perform less well. Some research supports this idea: perfectionistic striving and the stress associated has been shown to increase the risk of inaccurate and inefficient performance (Ishida, 2005; Stoeber, 2011)

The Yerkes-Dodson law and perfectionism: implications for therapists

The Yerkes-Dodson law can be integrated into CBT for perfectionism at various points, including psychoeducation and intervention. Some of the implications for overcoming perfectionistic striving include the following:

More effort isn’t always better

Putting too much effort into tasks may be unnecessary at best and counterproductive at worst.

Pressure can be a problem

Perfectionistic striving and the stress associated with it might actually increase the risk of inaccurate and inefficient performance (Ishida, 2005; Stoeber, 2011).

Less strain, same results

People with perfectionism might achieve the same or better results if they approach activities in a less effortful and pressured manner.

Find your zone

Individuals may benefit from behavioral experiments designed to help them discover their ‘zone of optimal performance’, which is likely to lie outside the boundaries of perfectionistic striving.

Conclusion

The Yerkes-Dodson law provides a useful alternative to the assumption that more pressure and more effort always lead to better performance. For perfectionistic clients, this can be a powerful idea: beyond a certain point, striving may become inefficient, unhelpful, and counterproductive.

Further Reading

• Egan, S. J., Wade, T. D., Shafran, R., & Antony, M. M. (2014). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of perfectionism. Guilford Press.

• Ishida, H. (2005). College students’ perfectionism and task-strategy inefficiency: Why their efforts go unrewarded? The Japanese Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 208–215.

• Shafran, R., Cooper, Z., & Fairburn, C. G. (2002). Clinical perfectionism: A cognitive-behavioral analysis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, 773–791.

• Shafran, R., Egan, S., & Wade, T. (2010). Overcoming perfectionism: A self-help guide using cognitive behavioral techniques. Constable and Robinson.

• Stoeber, J. (2011). Perfectionism, efficiency, and response bias in proof-reading performance: Extension and replication. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 426–429.

• Stoeber, J., & Stoeber, F. S. (2009). Domains of perfectionism: Prevalence and relationships with perfectionism, gender, age, and satisfaction with life. Personality and individual differences, 46(4), 530-535.

• 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, 459–482.