Case Study Of Yerkes Dodson Law

Investigation Report

Introduction: The purpose of this investigation was to investigate whether positive stimuli increase the happiness of participants when exposed to a stimulus that can be used to cope with stress. Happiness is an emotion that is defined as “the state of being content” and stress is “to experience worry.” The Yerkes-Dodson Law was established in “1908 by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson.” This law states that although stress can have a negative effect on an individual, a certain level of stress is required to have the motivation to perform every day activities. There is an “optimal level” of arousal that can help to retain information needed for the task at hand and assist with the successful completion

Table 1 and Graph 1 reveal that the mean did not increase or decrease after watching the video. This shows that the happiness scores on average were not affected by the video. The median increased after the video, the standard deviation decreased and the range decreased. These results show that the hypothesis was refuted, as it was hypothesised that the happiness scores would increase and the results proved that they stayed the

The five ethical issues of psychology are “Confidentiality, Right to withdraw, Accurate reporting, Informed consent and Voluntary participation.” An ethical strength present during this test was confidentiality. The participants were assigned with a random number which was not shared with any other participant or the investigator. Ethical strengths that were present in this experiment were the right to withdraw and voluntary participation. When needed, participants were allowed to withdraw from the test if they desired or not participate at all, this was made clear by the instructor prior to the test commencing. Another ethical strength of this investigation is accurate reporting; the data results were entered into a computer by the participants and checked to further ensure that they were entered correctly. An ethical weakness of this investigation was informed consent. The experimenter explained the test to the participants however there were some uncertainties regarding how to access the happiness score website, this weakness was treated by recording the happiness scores on paper. There was also some hesitation by participants on how to calculate the happiness scores. If this experiment was to be repeated, a way to improve this is by ensuring the instructions are fully understood by the