This makes sense because in response to anxiety-provoking stimuli, the options are either fight (meet the challenge), flight (run away/hide), or freeze (become paralyzed). Above a certain threshold, they began to hide rather than perform.Ĭorresponding behavior has been seen in human beings.

They saw that mice became more motivated to complete mazes when given electric shocks of increasing intensity – but only up to a point. In 1907, Robert Yerkes and John Dodson conducted one of the first experiments that illuminated a link between anxiety and performance. It’s here that people go about routines devoid of risk, causing their progress to plateau.īut the concept can be traced further back to the world of behavioral psychology.

Within the comfort zone, there isn’t much incentive for people to reach new heights of performance. “The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.” The phrase ‘comfort zone’ was coined by management thinker Judith Bardwick in her 1991 work Danger in the Comfort Zone: Now firmly embedded in cultural discourse, the metaphor of ‘leaving one’s comfort zone’ became popular in the 1990s.

4 Tips to Support Leaving Your Comfort Zone.

Benefits of Leaving the Comfort Zone: 4 Examples.

What Is the Comfort Zone in Psychology?.

Project zone 2 download free