Effects of induced muscular tension on performance and the inverted U function.

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Abstract
It was hypothesized that heart rate, as a function of increasing levels of induced muscular tension, would increase linearly throughout the range of tension, whereas, performance on a simple intellectual task, would progressively increase up to a moderate level of tension, beyond which it would progressively decline. A group of 100 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory psychology course, equated for basal level heart rate, were divided into 5 groups. Each group was subjected to 1 of 5 levels of induced muscular tension. Heart rate and performance on the intellectual task were measured before and after the induced tension, and the computed differences recorded as the measure of change. These differences, analyzed by means of an analysis of variance, revealed significant differences for both heart rate and performance. In addition, trend tests were performed to see if these differences followed the predicted trends. It was found that heart rate displayed a significant linear trend across conditions, whereas performance scores manifested the predicted significant quadratic component. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

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