I'm being evil today and giving everyone homework.
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Yerkes/Law/
This paper is the work that eventually led to the "inverted U" Yerkes-Dodson law of human performance. The law posits that as stimulation increases, arousal (think alertness not the other, more fun version) increases to a point. After that point further stimulation theoretically results in a decrease in arousal. Sounds valid on the face of it (I love that phrase). There are issues with the initial paper (obviously the first issue would be that the study involved mice, not people).
Now others have done studies trying to apply the conclusions of this paper to humans (and the studies are arguable as to their validity). Your homework is to read this original work and tell me what some of the other issues are with the conclusions.
:D
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15 hours ago
Oh dear. I'm afraid I don't have time here at work to tear it apart in too much detail. Here are a few complaints:
ReplyDelete1. There were only forty mice total in the experiment. This means that, at most, four mice were used at each electricity setting (i.e. stimulus) for each shade difference. It took me a little while to notice this, since I misread "Mouse number" as "numbers of mice used in this test" rather than "the number assigned to the particular individual used". I just assumed that no researcher would possibly be stupid enough to plot a line connecting individual mice as if there were no uncertainty in the mouse's behavior.
2. The "special conditions" of Sets I through III involved using plain white and plain black boxes, and adjusting the amount of light entering the boxes to change the differentiation of the two conditions. It seems experimentally cleaner to either use two white boxes and adjust the light, or to use constant light and adjust the shade of paint used to shades of gray to reduce the differentiation.
3. "Units of stimulation"? Wouldn't it be better to use a grown-up unit of measurement, like amperes? I think these units are kind of stupid, but since all they're trying to do is make "mild", "medium", and "owwie" levels of shock it might be okay (provided you're okay with calling something a "bathtub" or "inverted U" when at most it could look like a V.)
4. "The results of the second set of experiments contradict those of the first set. What does this mean? It occurred to us that the apparent contradiction might be due to the fact that discrimination was much easier in the experiments of set II than in those of set I." The authors don't really suggest reasons for why this might be the case. I'd suggest that mice tend to panic when subjected to very painful stimulation, therefore are less likely to learn quickly. However, even a panicked mouse can tell the difference between the most obvious color differences. The fact that the U-curve does not apply in cases of clear distinction makes it very problematic to apply this research to anything other than electrifying mice. When applying it to other circumstances, how much clarity between choices is "obvious" and therefore wouldn't be degraded by increased stimulation?
...And this is rapidly turning into a blog post rather than a comment, so I'll just stop there.