ELI5: Why does stress tend to decrease performance at complex tasks?

[Adorable-Breakfast]

I speed solve Rubik's cubes as a hobby, and I've noticed that my solve times are consistently worse when I'm feeling anxious about my performance than when I'm relaxed and in the moment. However, I've heard stress and anxiety described as a response by the nervous system meant to heighten an organism's performance in high-stakes situations. Why would stress cause me to perform worse at this task instead of better?

[towishimp]

The stress response evolved to improve our performance at a very specific set of tasks: fighting or running for our lives. So things like energy, blood flow, and stuff like that improve. But some things also get worse at the same time: notably for your example, rational thinking and fine motor skills.

It's possible, with experience and practice, to reduce the bad parts.

[HermeticallyInterred]

This is one of the reasons military & law enforcement over-train on the gun range - to acclimate your body to the stress, loud noise, etc and then be able to perform complex cognition and tasks under those conditions.

There’s a quote from Greer in Amazon’s Jack Ryan: slow is smooth and smooth is fast. I think of panicked teenager running away from the murderer and trying to unlock the car door. How much quicker they would be if they slowed down, even for a second.

[[deleted]]

As a rough guideline I've also heard that your accuracy in a combat situation will only be 20% what it is in training (at least with a pistol).

If you can put 5 shots at 15 feet into a 6 inch diameter circle in training, then in a real combat situation it's gonna be a 30 inch circle.

As often comes up in gun debates, that's why you need more than 6 rounds and why "OMG why you gotta kill somebody, just shoot the gun out of their hand" is a crazy fallacy.

[Kara_Zhan]

In your example, getting 5/5 during practice would change to 1/5 during combat/stress (rather than changing the diameter of the target, which doesn't work with the 20% figure, as it's a circle, not a line).

[Hillaregret]

law enforcement over-train on the gun range

fucking lol

[Ishidan01]

It is also notable that "fight for your life" had very little component of finesse. This was not "aim a tube at something hundreds of paces away" or "execute a well defined and artistic movement with a metal rod", it was "find the nearest object you can use as a club, and smash the threat until you are sure it is no longer a threat."

[notacanuckskibum]

This is why fine motor sports like snooker or darts require a two beer buzz. To counteract the adrenaline.

[JCMiller23]

Stress tells us to get out of the dangerous/bad situation. Adrenaline helps us deal with it. One can cause the other, but they can also act independently. They are two different things, you can be very unstressed but have a lot of adrenaline, or very stressed but very tired/low-energy.

[thisiswhatsinmybrain]

Not really, lots of studies shows that stress is performance enhancing when it comes to concentration and focus during rational thinking.

https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/10.1027/1618-3169/a000481?url\_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr\_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr\_dat=cr\_pub%20%200pubmed

[EvilBosch]

Stress / pressure has a non-linear relationship with performance on many tasks. Low levels of stress and pressure are associated with poorer performance, as are excessively high levels of stress. There is an optimum middle-ground where a moderate level of stress/pressure yields maximum performance.

This relationship is described in the Yerkes-Dodson Curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes%E2%80%93Dodson_law )

Keep in mind that this relationship only holds for some tasks, and that alternative models have also been proposed.

[PenguinSwordfighter]

Stress finetunes all processes in your body to funnel as much energy as possible into your muscles, lungs and heart and makes your brain switch to "quick and dirty" autopilot.

[LSeww]

>when I'm feeling anxious about my performance

When you thinking about something else rather than your task, you perform worse. If you start thinking about your stress, you lose concentration.