Factors such as shift work, sleep deprivation, and noise affect job performance in part because they affect individuals' levels of arousal. Recent work on arousal has identified two distinct forms of arousal that affect performance in very different ways. Tense arousal represents a continuum from calmness to anxiety, whereas energetic arousal reflects a continuum from tiredness to energy. The three studies reported here sought to determine the usefulness of breaking down energetic arousal still further, into dimensions of wakefulness and vigor. In the first study, a factor analysis of self-reported psychological state data determined that wakefulness and vigor did form separate factors. The second study found that the circadian rhythms of wakefulness and vigor differed; wakefulness increased over the day, whereas vigor peaked at noon. The third study examined the relationship between the two types of arousal and performance on a reading comprehension task. Although both wakefulness and vigor showed an association with performance, only vigor showed the inverted-U-shaped relationship embodied in the Yerkes-Dodson law. These data suggest that distinguishing between wakefulness and vigor will clarify how changes in arousal levels affect productivity. These results also suggest that the schedule for optimal performance of tasks depends on whether they are facilitated by either wakefulness or vigor.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Adan, A., & Guardia, J. (1993). Circadian variations of self-reported activation: A multidimensional approach. Chronobiologia, 20, 233-244.
2.
Anderson, K. J. (1994). Impulsivity, caffeine, and task difficulty: A within-subjects test of the Yerkes-Dodson law. Personality and Individual Differences, 16, 813-821.
3.
Aschoff, J. (1965). Circadian rhythms in man. Science, 148, 1427-1432.
4.
Aschoff, J., Giedke, H., Popple, E., & Wever, R. (1972). The influence of sleep-interruption and sleep-deprivation on circadian rhythms in human performance. In W. P. Colquhoun (Ed.), Aspects of human efficiency: Diurnal rhythm and loss of sleep (pp. 135-150). London: English Universities.
5.
Baddeley, A. D., Hatter, J. E., Scott, D., & Snashall, A. (1970). Memory and time of day. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 22605-609.
6.
Blake, M. J. F. (1967). Time of day effects on performance in a range of tasks. Psychonomic Science, 9, 345-350.
7.
Blake, M. J. F. (1971). Temperament and time of day. In W. P. Colquhoun (Ed.), Biological rhythms and human performance (pp. 109-148). New York: Academic.
8.
Block, J., Block, J. H., & Harrington, D. (1974). Some misgivings about the Matching Familiar Figures Test as a measure of reflection-impulsivity. Developmental Psychology, 10, 611-632.
9.
Bohlin, G., & Kjellberg, A. (1973). Self-reported arousal during sleep deprivation and its relation to performance and physiological variables. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 14, 78-86.
10.
Bonnet, M. H., Gomez, S., Wirth, O., & Arand, D. L. (1995). The use of caffeine versus prophylactic naps in sustained performance. Sleep, 18, 97-104.
11.
Broadbent, D. E. (1963). Differences and interactions between stresses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 15, 205-211.
12.
Buck, L. (1977). Circadian rhythms in step-input pursuit tracking. Ergonomics, 20, 19-31.
13.
Caldwell, J. (1995). Assessing the impact of stressors on performance: Observations on levels of analyses. Biological Psychology, 40, 197-208.
14.
Chiles, W. D., Alluisi, E. A., & Adams, O. S. (1968). Work schedules and performance during confinement. Human Factors, 10, 143-196.
15.
Clements, P. R., Hafer, M. D., & Vermillion, M.E. (1976). Psychometric, diurnal, and electrophysiological correlates of activation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 387-394.
16.
Colquhoun, W. P., Blake, M. J., & Edwards, R. S. (1968a). Experimental studies of shift work: I. A comparison of "rotating" and "stabilized" 4-hour systems. Ergonomics, II, 437-453.
17.
Colquhoun, W. P., Blake, M. J., & Edwards, R. S. (1968b). Experimental studies of shift work: II. Stabilized 8-hour shift systems. Ergonomics, 11, 527-546.
18.
Colquhoun, W. P., Blake, M. J., & Edwards, R.S. (1969). Experimental studies of shift work: III. Stabilized 12-hour shift systems. Ergonomics, 12, 856-882.
19.
Czeisler, C. A., Weitzman, E. D., Moore-Ede, M. C., Zimmerman, J. C., & Knauer, R. S. (1980). Human sleep: Its duration and organization depends on its circadian phase. Science, 2101264-1267.
20.
Eysenck, M. W. (1974). Extraversion, arousal, and retrieval from semantic memory. Journal of Personality, 42, 319-331.
21.
Eysenck, M. W. (1976). Extraversion, activation, and the recall of prose. British Journal of Psychology, 67, 53-61.
22.
Folkard, S. (1975). Diurnal variation in logical reasoning. British Journal of Psychology, 66, 1-8.
23.
Folkard, T. H., Monk, T. H., Bradbury, R., & Rosenthal, J. (1977). Time of day effects in school children's immediate and delayed recall of meaningful material. British Journal of Psychology, 68, 45-50.
24.
Froberg, J. E., Karlsson, C., Levi, L., & Lidberg, L. (1975). Circadian rhythms of catecholamine excretion, shooting range performance and self-ratings of fatigue during sleep deprivation. Biological Psychology, 2, 175-188.
25.
Gautherie, M. (1973). Circadian rhythm in the vasomotor oscillations of skin temperature in man. Chronobiology, I, 103-139.
26.
Gruber, G. R., & Gruber, E. C. (1973). Graduate Record Examination Aptitude Test: A complete review for the verbal and math parts of the test.New York: Simon & Schuster.
27.
Harley, T. A., & Matthews, G. (1992). Interactive effects of extroversion, arousal and time of day on semantic priming: Are they lexical or post-lexical?Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 1021-1029.
28.
Hays, W. L. (1988). Statistics (4th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Rinehart and Winston.
29.
Klein, K. E., Hermann, R., Kuklinski, P., & Wegmann, H. M. (1977). Circadian performance rhythms: Experimental studies in air operations. In R. R. Mackie (Ed.), Vigilance: Theory, operational performance and physiological correlates (pp. 111-132). New York: Plenum.
30.
Klein, K. E., Wegman, H. M., & Hunt, B. I. (1972). desynchronization as a function of body temperature and performance circadian rhythm as a result of outgoing and homecoming transmeridian flights. Aerospace Medicine, 43, 119-132.
31.
Koob, G. F. (1991). Arousal, stress and inverted U-shaped curves: Implications for cognitive function. In R. G. Lister, & H. J. Weingartner (Eds.), Perspectives on cognitive neuroscience (pp. 300-313). New York: Oxford University Press.
32.
Lacey, J. I. (1967). Somatic response patterning and stress: Some revisions of activation theory. In M. H. Appley, & R. Trumbull (Eds.), Psychological stress (pp. 39-42). New York: Appleton-Century Crofts.
33.
Matthews, G. (1987). Personality and multidimensional arousal: A study of two dimensions of extroversion. Personality and Individual Differences, 8, 9-16.
34.
Matthews, G., Davies, D. R., & Holley, P. D. (1990). Extraversion, arousal and visual sustained attention: The role of resource availability. Personality and Individual Differences, 10, 1159-1173.
35.
Matthews, G., Davies, D. R., & Lees, J. L. (1990). Arousal, extroversion and individual differences in resource availability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 150-168.
36.
Matthews, G., & Harley, T. A. (1993). Effects of extroversion and self-report arousal on semantic priming: A connectionist approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 735-756.
37.
Matthews, G., Jones, D. M., & Chamberlain, A. G. (1989). Interactive effects of extroversion and arousal on attentional task performance: Multiple resources or encoding processes?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 629-639.
38.
Matthews, G., Jones, D. M., & Chamberlain, A. G. (1990). Refining the measurement of mood: The UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist. British Journal of Psychology, 81, 17-42.
39.
Matthews, G., & Westerman, S. J. (1994). Energy and tension as predictors of controlled visual and memory search. Personality and Individual Differences, 17, 617-626.
40.
Monk, T. H., & Leng, V. C. (1982). Time of day effects in simple repetitive tasks: Some possible mechanisms. Acta Psychologica, 51, 207-221.
41.
Moore-Ede, M. C., Brennan, M. E., & Ball, M. R. (1975). Circadian variation of intercompartmental potassium fluxes in man. Journal of Applied Physiology, 38, 163-170.
42.
Moore-Ede, M. C., Sulzman, F. M., & Fuller, C. A. (1982). The clocks that time us.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
43.
Parasuraman, R., Warm, J. S., & See, J. E. (1999). Brain and systems of vigilance. In Parasuraman, R. (Ed.), The attentive brain (pp. 221-256). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
44.
Revelle, W., Humphreys, M. S., Simon, L., & Gilliland, K. (1980). The interactive effect of personality, time of day, and caffeine: A test of the arousal model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 109, 1-31.
45.
Robbins, T. W. (1997). Arousal systems and attentional processes. Biological Psychology, 45, 57-71.
46.
Rosa, R. B., & Colligan, M. J. (1988). Long workdays versus restdays: Assessing fatigue and alertness with a portable performance battery. Human Factors, 30, 305-317.
47.
Routtenberg, A. (1968). The two-arousal hypothesis: Reticular formation and limbic system. Psychological Review, 75, 51-80.
48.
Smith, A. P. (1987). Activation states and semantic processing: A comparison of the effects of noise and time of day. Acta Psychologica, 54, 271-288.
49.
Smith, A. P. (1989). Diurnal variations in performance. In A. M. Colley, & J. R. Beech (Eds.), Acquisition and performance of cognitive skills (pp. 301-325). New York: Wiley.
50.
Smith, A. P., & Miles, C. (1986a). Acute effects of lunch on cognitive vigilance tasks. Ergonomics, 29, 1251-1261.
51.
Smith, A. P., & Miles, C. (1986b). Acute effects of meals, noise, and nightwork. British Journal of Psychology, 77, 377-389.
52.
Thayer, R. E. (1967). Measurement of activation through selfreport. Psychological Reports, 20663-678.
53.
Thayer, R. E. (1970). Activation states as assessed by verbal report and four psychophysiological variables. Psychophysiology, 7, 86-94.
54.
Thayer, R. E. (1978a). Factor-analytic and reliability studies on the Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List. Psychological Reports, 42, 747-756.
55.
Thayer, R. E. (1978b). Towards a psychological theory of multidimensional activation (arousal). Motivation and Emotion, 2, 1-34.
56.
Thayer, R. E. (1985). Activation (arousal): The shift from a single to a multidimensional perspective. In J. Strelau, T. Gale, & F. Parley (Eds.), Biological bases of personality and behavior (Vol. 1, pp. 115-127). Washington, DC: Wiley.
57.
Thayer, R. E., & Carey, D. (1974). Spatial stimulus generalization as a function of white noise and activation level. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 102, 539-542.
58.
Thayer, R. E., & Cox, S. J. (1968). Activation, manifest anxiety, and verbal learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 78, 524-526.
59.
Thayer, R. E., Takahashi, P. J., & Pauli, J. A. (1988). Multidimensional arousal states, diurnal rhythm, cognitive and social processes, and extroversion. Personality and Individual Differences, 9, 15-24.
60.
Wever, R. A. (1979). The circadian rhythm of man: Results of experiments under temporal isolation.New York: Springer-Verlag.
61.
Wilkinson, R. T. (1964). Effects of up to 60 hours of sleep deprivation on different types of work. Ergonomics, 7175-186.
62.
Wittmaier, B. C. (1974). Test anxiety, mood, and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 664-669.
63.
Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit formation. Nature, 84459-482.
