A Study of Stress : Part One
In the first part of this two-part series, we will examine how the Yerkes-Dodson Law, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and Imposter Syndrome relate to stress.
By Paul Merimee — December 8, 2022
Imagine you are taking a class in which the professor does not hand out assignments and seemingly only grades on attendance. Some upperclassmen have told you that the final is completely open book, so it's an easy A. The semester flies by. You've attended the lectures, but you're mostly just scrolling Instagram or doing homework for a more difficult class. Then, at the end of your last course before finals, the professor announces that the administration has asked him to change things up. The final will not be open book. In fact, the final will be comprehensive, short answer, and handwritten. There will be an essay at the end of the final. He wishes the class luck and leaves before the horror of the situation de scends upon the gathered students. Your heart begins to race. Sweat beads on the tips of your fingers while an icy chill runs up your spine. In your mind, you watch as your GPA ticks down and down. All day you try to think of ways to get out of the final, how you could speed read the book, or convince the dean to overrule the professor. This continues until your head hits your lumpy pillow, sending you into a shallow, uneasy sleep.
Congratulations, you have just experienced the General Adaptation Syndrome coined by Hans Seyle. It outlines the three stages of stress response: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. It states that when met by a stressor, your sympathetic nervous system lights up like a Christmas tree, activating fight or flight mode. After being alarmed by the stressor, you enter the resistance phase, staying in it until you either run out of energy trying to solve the issue or you overcome the obstacle and activate your rest and relax system (Parasympathetic nervous system). If you stay in this phase for too long, you enter the third and final phase: exhaustion. While this sounds bad, stress shouldn't be considered negative. By understanding the nature of stress, our own stressors, and how we respond to stress, we can learn to increase our performance in school, life, and work. In the first part of this two-part series, we will examine how the Yerkes-Dodson Law, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and Imposter Syndrome relate to stress. In the second part we will tie these different psychological principles together using the Comfort, Panic, Stretch model.
Yerkes-Dodson Law
As a fundamental principle in our examination of stress we will look at the Yerkes-Dodson Law, a framework for stress and performance. In the original study, Yerkes and Dodson examined Japanese dancing mice, concluding that the mice performed optimally when exposed to a certain amount of stress (electric shocks). This experiment led to the derivation of the law stating that performance increases with stress up to a certain point, after which it decreases. Furthermore, the optimal arousal changes based on the type of task. Performance in low difficulty or endurance tasks rises with stress and is not negatively impacted by those high levels while performance in complex, novel tasks has a “sweet spot” and decreases after stress gets too high. These relationships are easily explained by examining the graph below.
What makes this theory attractive to us over alternative theories of stress is that the Yerkes-Dodson Law is nearly identical to the relationship between stress hormone activity and memory performance, making it particularly applicable to college students who often must engage their memory while in a state of stress.
Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Dunning-Kruger effect states that individuals with low competency tend to overrate their ability. These individuals tend to have mild stress, exist on the low end of the anxiety performance curve, and cannot objectively analyze themselves and their actions. For example, a new server may underestimate the job's difficulty and be surprised at how poorly they perform on their first day. Although these individuals appear to respond to stress well, this response is due to false confidence. In other words, the stressor may be acutely present, but they need to respond to it properly as they cannot identify it. As Charles Darwin put it: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." To overcome this ignorant confidence, one needs to develop some ability to analyze themselves and others, properly placing oneself on the competency ladder.
The Imposter Syndrome
The imposter syndrome describes people that view themselves as frauds in a given area. These individuals tend to have acute stress, exist on the high end of the anxiety performance curve, and often overanalyze themselves to the point they cannot see their skill. Even with simple tasks, they may decrease their performance with increased stress, as they view these tasks as out of their ability range. For example, a server with three years of experience desperately avoids training new employees because she fears teaching them something wrong. Generally, these individuals will have some success or skills but succumb to stress easily, paralyzing them. Overcoming this hurdle can be complicated, but it is not impossible and often centers on resetting expectations, accepting positive feedback, and forming a realistic, grounded view of self and ability.
Kariuki, C. (2021, February 7). Retitling stress: A look at the Yerkes-Dodson Law. Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science. Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://sites.dartmouth.edu/dujs/2021/02/07/retitling-stress-a-look-at-the-yerkes-dodson-law/
Lupien SJ, Maheu F, Tu M, Fiocco A, Schramek TE (2007). "The effects of stress and stress hormones on human cognition: Implications for the field of brain and cognition".Brain and Cognition . 65 (3): 209—237. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.459.1378. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2007.02.007. PMID 17466428. S2CID 5778988
It is important to remember that you can suffer from both the Imposter Syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger Effect. You could be the former individual in math or chemistry, the latter in sociology or at work, and perfectly well-adjusted in everything else. In the second part of this series, we will look at the comfort, panic, and stretch zones and how they relate to life as a student and life in general. Until then, I encourage you to take some time and think about your stress response, where you lie on the anxiety-performance curve, and some of the fallacies or traps you might fall into. Understanding how we react to stress is the first step in controlling that reaction!
Paul Merimee
Paul Merimee grew up in sunny and vibrant Cleveland, Ohio with his eight siblings. In his early years Paul loved to read, voraciously consuming anything that had an engaging front cover at the library. Paul wanted to be a software engineer, not an author. He somehow ended up going to a small, liberal arts college in the middle of Wyoming. It was there that he was introduced to the great writers like Homer, Dostoevsky, Aristotle, and more.
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