Sophia Junior College Faculty Journal
Vol.28, 2008, 1-7

Is “Facilitating Anxiety” All in Your Head?
Kenneth E. Williams

This paper examines research concerning“facilitating anxiety”that isoften cited in the language learning literature and that many language
teachers are familiar with. It starts with Yerks and Dobson’s（1908）work
and then reviews a number of attempts to create a scale to distinguishbetween students for whom anxiety has a positive effect（facilitatinganxiety）and students for whom anxiety has a negative effect in test
taking or second language learning situations. Various problems
regarding the conceptualization of anxiety and attempts to measure it
are pointed out.

Introduction
The idea that anxiety works as a positive force in learning is widely and deeply
held in the educational ﬁeld. This positive force is referred to as“facilitating anxiety.”
In fact, a“law”has evolved from this concept. Known as“the Yerks-Dobson Law”or“the law of the inverted U,”it is regarded as a law of nature in the sense of “a broadgeneralization expressive of the constant action, or effect, of natural conditions”（Lawof Nature, Wikipedia）. In conversation, we may also refer to this law as a fact ofnature. Although I have attempted to discover when Yerks and Dobson’s（ 1908 ）concept of facilitating anxiety was first referred to as a law, I have been unable todo so. Not all educators use the terms Yerks-Dobson Law and facilitating anxiety;however, I have noticed strong agreement with the concepts when they are mentioned
during lectures and even stronger disagreements with anyone who argues against
them. Personally, I am not one who supports them, and in this paper, I will review
important research related to these concepts and identify problems that I find inarguments attempting to support them.

DefinitionsFirst, I view the term“facilitating anxiety”to be a contradiction in terms.

──Kenneth E. Williams“Facilitating”is primarily defined as making something easier and“anxiety”asagitation, worry, and so on. In other words, worry or agitation makes a task easier.
It is in fact not that easy to deﬁne anxiety because the term anxiety has been usedas or confused with fear, dread, phobia, fright, panic, apprehension, and angst.
Furthermore, some people use the mental states of doubt, boredom, and conflict
when referring to anxiety（Barlow, 2004; Craske, 1999）. Now, if facilitating anxiety
decreased anxiety, then I believe the term would be used appropriately. Of course,people opposed to my view will point out that“ facilitate ”also may mean help.
However, this is not the main deﬁnition in any dictionary I have seen. I like the soundof“facilitating motivation”more, but I will leave that as a topic for another paper.

Yerks-Dobson Law
Most often those supporting facilitating anxiety refer to the Yerks-Dobson
Law, also known as the“inverted U.” What many people from both academic andnonacademic groups believe is that as anxiety increases, performance increases until
a maximum point is reached. After that point, performance decreases. However,I speculate that not all supporters of facilitating anxiety have read Yerks andDobson’s 1908 paper. Yerks and Dobson’s work was accomplished with mice thatthe researchers wanted to enter one small white box and not another that was black,and attempts“to enter the black box resulted in the receipt of a disagreeable electricshock”（p. 459, emphasis mine）. On the same page, electric shock is referred to as a“stimulus,”which is a term often used by individuals trumpeting facilitating anxiety.

In their book on test anxiety, Cizek and Burg（ 2005 ）state,“ In 1908 , two
psychologists, Robert Yerkes and John Dobson made a number of interesting
discoveries about the relationship between anxiety（they called it‘arousal’）andperformance”（p. 22）. They then go on to describe the inverted U and how it helps
performance to a point after which performance decreases. However, contrary to what
Cizek and Burg reported, the word“arousal”was never used by Yerks and Dobson in
their 1908 paper. They did use the word“stimulus”or a derivative of it over 68 times
and the phrase electric shock or electric stimulus over 10 times.

Anxiety and Test-taking
Another important paper for the advocates of facilitating anxiety was written──Is“Facilitating Anxiety”All in Your Head?

by Alpert and Haber（1960）. The key point of this study was that it included“adescription of a new achievement-anxiety scale which has been devised to indicate
not only the presence of or absence of anxiety, but whether the anxiety facilitates
or debilitates test performance”（p. 207）. There are seven statements that were
designed to show that a student had“Facilitating Test Anxiety”（see Appendix）. The
statements can be divided into“symptoms,”“stressors,”and another one that I ﬁnd
something of an anomaly.
Statements two, three, and four refer to nervousness or distraction. Both of these
symptoms may be indicators that anxiety is present. However, they are not related toanxiety alone. They can be an indication of fear, excitement, or even happiness. Nowof course I am not trying to say that the statement“nervousness while taking a test
helps me do better”is an indication that the person is happy. I am trying to make it
clear that it may not necessarily only be referring to anxiety. It could be referring tofear, which is not anxiety. Some people may retort that the reaction by the student
may be the same. If one takes this view, as I do, then one agrees that the statements
can relate to more emotions than just anxiety.
Statements ﬁve, six, eight, and nine refer to what could be called stressors. In
other words, the situation presented is one that that Alpert and Haber（1960）believe
will create anxiety in individuals. I do not agree with that assumption. For example,
consider statement ﬁve:“In courses in which the total grade is based mainly on one
exam, I seem to do better than other people.”People may be happy that they can dobetter because they have a longer time to study. We need to make an assumptionthat the test referred to is administered at the end of the course. Also, they may likethis style and not feel anxiety but happiness because they prefer to study for one
test rather then many. I am able to see other possibilities in the stressor statements.
Perhaps the readers of this paper will also, if they read them and think about them awhile.
The one statement I ﬁnd difﬁcult to put into only one of the categories above isstatement seven. It is long and convoluted. This statement surly has many possible
interpretations. Alpert and Haber took a rather simple stimulus-response approachto anxiety and ignored the complexity of emotions. Nevertheless, it is importantto remember that Alpert and Haber stated that the facilitating scale statements
were“based on a prototype of the item . . .‘Anxiety helps me do better during
examinations and test’”（p. 213）. I do not see that this is the only possibility.

──Kenneth E. Williams

Anxiety and Second Language Learning
A number of books in second language learning also present the facilitating
anxiety position, for example, Arnold（1999）, Gass and Selineker（2001）, and LarsenFreeman and Long（1991）. Along the way, it seems to be forgotten that what Yerks
and Dobson did was give electric shocks to mice as a stimulus. I have gone out of myway to call attention to this point because I truly want people to remember the sourceof the experiments when they read what is called the“Yerks-Dobson Law”or the“inverted U.”No one who cites Yerks and Dobson’s 1908 work mentions that they did

three experiments with mice, and one of the tests showed more or less a straight line,
not an“inverted U.”Yerks and Dobson explained this by stating that the“irregularityof curve II ... is due doubtless to the small numbers of animals in the experiments.
Had we trained 10 mice with each strength of stimulus instead of four the curve
probably would have fallen regularly”（p. 481, emphasis mine）.
Kleinmann（1977）developed a version of Alpert and Haber’s test adapted for
the ESL classroom. Unfortunately, he did not present all of the statements he used.
In fact, he only presents one that is relevant for this paper: “Nervousness while using
English helps me do better”（p. 98）. If we look at this one statement, we are forced toask to whom the person is talking, what the environment is, and if this nervousness
is caused by anxiety. Designing a test that will only evaluate facilitating anxiety is
not easy to do, if at all. Moreover, as Williams（1991）pointed out, in a real life setting
the reactions possible are much more complicated than“up”or“down,”and as theUniversity of Iowa Academic Advising Center（2004）, points out“test anxiety issomething different than heightened concern.”

Problems with the Concept
The dominant concept to support facilitating anxiety directly or indirectly that
one ﬁnds in the academic literature is the inverted U. However, Staal（2004）points
out that “. . . the Yerks-Dobson law and the inverted U seem to have outlived theirusefulness as an absolute and unitary theory in human performance”（p. 9）. An evenstronger view was taken in 1965 by Brown when he suggested that the“law”should
be buried in silence. Hancock, Ganey, and Szalma（2002）stated that if “you look overthe studies conducted between Yerkes and Dodson in 1908 and Broadhurst in 1957,
there is no indication of curvilinear data, much less discussion about its meaning.”──Is“Facilitating Anxiety”All in Your Head?

It is far more difﬁcult to ﬁnd research that supports Yerks and Dobson’s work thanresearch that refutes it.
Why does the concept of facilitating anxiety linger on in the educational system?
Having taught for more than twenty-ﬁve years, I have observed that the ﬁrst but notnecessarily the most noteworthy reason is to weed out students through stress often
related to competition. In addition, I believe that anxiety is a way to control students
and classes. Students are confronted with the punishment of poor grades, extra
work, or not matriculating to the next level or into the school they want to. The fear
resulting from these threats can create anxiety.

Conclusion
To sum up, what I have done is presented issues that plague the basic conceptthat is generally considered the real truth by many, if not most educators: the myth of“facilitating anxiety.”I have not attempted to include every possible citation in thispaper but instead to highlight the most relevant. However, before my critics reach forthe switch on their computers to write their rebuttals, I urge them ﬁrst to read Staal（2004）, Teigen（1994 ）, Williams（1991）, and Yerks and Dobson（1908）.

References
Alpert. R., & Haber, R.（1960）. Anxiety in academic achievement situations. Journalof Abnormal and Social Psychology, 61（2）, 207-215.
Barlow, D.（ 2004 ）. Anxiety and Its Disorders, Second Edition, The Nature andTreatment of Anxiety and Panic. New York: Guilford Press.
Brown, W. P.（ 1965 ）. The Yerks-Dobson law repealed. Psychology Reports, 17 ,663-666.
Cizek, G. J., & Burg S. S.（ 2005 ）. Addressing Test Anxiety in a High-Stakes
Environment: Strategies for Classrooms and Schools. Thousand Oaks, CA:Corwin Press.
Craske, M.（ 1999 ）. Anxiety Disorders: Psychological Approaches to Theory andTreatment. NY: Basic Books.
Gass, S. & Selinker, L（2001）. Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Hancock, P.A., & Ganey, H.C.N.（2002）. From the inverted-U to the extended-U: The──Kenneth E. Williamsevolution of a law of psychology. Journal of Human Performance in Extreme
Enviornments. 7（1）, 5-12.
Hancock, P. Ganey, N. & Szalma, J.（ 2002 ）. Performance under stress: A reevaluation of a foundational law of psychology. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual
Army Science Conference. Orlando, Florida. Retrieved March 1, 2007, fromhttp://www.mit.ucf.edu/Stress/Hancock_Ganey_Szalma_2002.pdf
Kleinmann, E.（1977）. Towards a characterization of the strategies of transfer insecond language learning. Interlanguage Study Bulletin. 2, 58-145.
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Long M. H.（1991）. An Introduction to Second Language
Acquisition Research. New York: Longman.
Law of Nature. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved October 1, 2007, fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_nature.
Staal, M. A.（2004）. Stress, Cognition, and Human Performance: A Literature Review
and Conceptual Framework, Ames Research Center, NASA/TM-2004-212824.
Retrieved March 1 , 2007 , from http://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/
ﬂightcognition/ Publications/IH_054_Staal.pdf
Teigen, K. H.（1994）. Yerks-Dobson: A law for all seasons. Theory & Psychology, 4（4）,525-547.
University of Iowa Academic Advising Center.（2004）. Test Anxiety. Retrieved March

1, 2007, from http://www.uiowa.edu/web/advisingcenter/test_anxiety.htm.
Williams, K.（1991）. Anxiety and formal second/foreign language learning. RELC
Journal, 22（2）, 19-28.
Yerks, R. M., & Dobson J. D.（1908）. The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidityof habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18,459-482.

Appendix
Facilitating Anxiety Scale

1.

I work most effectively under pressure as when the task is very important.

2.

While I may（or may not）be nervous before taking an exam, once I start. I seemto forget to be nervous.

3.

Nervousness while taking a test helps me do better.

4.

When I start a test, nothing is able to distract me.

5.

In courses in which the total grade is based mainly on one exam, I seem to do──Is“Facilitating Anxiety”All in Your Head?

better than other people.

6.

I look forward to exams.

7.

Although“cramming”under pre-examination tension is not effective for mostpeople, I find if the need arises, I can learn material immediately before anexam, even under considerable pressure, and successfully retain it to use on theexam.

8.

I enjoy taking a difﬁcult exam more than an easy one.

9.

The more important the exam or test, the better I seem to do.

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