The “Yerkes-Dodson law” says moderate stress boosts performance while too much makes it crash. It comes from a 1908 study on mice that had to learn to choose between a white box and a black one, with every mistake punished by an electric shock. On the hard version of the task, medium shocks produced the best learning. Stretching this into an “inverted U” for all human performance only came decades later.
Remembering is not replaying a recording — it is rebuilding. Each time you recall a memory, it becomes temporarily malleable and can be altered before being stored again. That is why two people can sincerely remember the same event… differently.
In 2003, Johnson and Goldstein compared European countries. Where you must tick a box to become a donor, consent rates ranged from 4% to 28%. Where you're a donor by default unless you opt out, they topped 85%. People aren't more generous on one side; most simply stick with whatever option was chosen for them.