The Yerkes-Dodson Curve for AI Agents: Emergent Cooperation Under Environmental Pressure in Multi-Agent LLM Simulations
This paper demonstrates that environmental pressure in multi-agent LLM simulations follows a Yerkes-Dodson inverted-U relationship, where medium stress optimizes emergent cooperative trade while extreme pressure causes behavioral collapse, and suggests that calibrating such pressure serves as an effective curriculum design strategy for agent development.