Stressors in the Research World
A stimulus used in stress experiments
When you are working within research, you face unpredicted situations the moment you are about to put an experiment to test. So before diving in the experiment you do your research, draw a specific workflow, and then you try to list all possible solutions for each step.
We at Empathic Labs decided to put an experiment to test.
One of the main topics that interest us and which we have been working on lately is stress. Stress was defined by was Hans Selye back in the 1930s as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”. Many researchers, institutes, hospitals, and doctors are working on ways to reduce stress through therapy, using verbal or nonverbal communication, exercises, and meditation, etc...
At Empathic Labs, we decided to conduct the experiment of reducing stress by an empathic response from the machine. We drew the workflow and we noticed one factor that is so important it can affect drastically our results. How are we going to provoke stress in participants?
In this article, we present some of our findings related to what it is called stressors.
“Stressor is the external force or influence acting on the individual — Hans Selye”
These stressors are used when researchers are setting their experiments, it can be included in different approaches and different kinds of tests were proposed that will be listed later on.
When we were searching for common stressors to implement, we clustered four categories:
1- Cognitive Stressor
Cognitive stressor consists of any mental challenging task.
This kind of stressor is normally used when the purpose of the test is to have a poor concentration or memory difficulties. In research, a common task, for example, is mental arithmetic calculations.
2- Social Pressure Stressor
Social pressure stressors are normally used when evaluating the performance of an individual, especially by an external person. Normally it has personal affection on the participant.
For example, job interviews, can increase the cortisol response, and heighten the electrodermal activity which is remarkably fundamental for researchers' synthesis.
3- Timing Pressure Stressor
TIME is something that no one can control. It is a continuous progress of the events we go through creating the past, the present, and the future. Giving a time limit for a certain task can have effects on your heart rate response and can lead to stress. For that, researchers always tend to wrap the experiment with a timing pressure stressor to see changes in human behavior or to analyze physiological changes.
4- Random Events Stressor
Random events are one of the most effective stressors. By random, we mean the generation of unpredictable conditions that can disturb the participant. For example, you find experiments with sudden noises, changes in the background, or unexpectedly moving objects to another position. All of these factors greatly increase stress.
We have seen the four kinds of stressors that we were able to find in our analysis. These stressors are so important because it induces peaks in the human body either in the verbal or non-verbal expressions.
We list some of the tests we found interesting to share like:
- Trier Social
- Sing a Song
- Stroop Color-Word
- Mental Arithmetic
- Text Transcription and Rapid Clicking
- Ball Control and Berg Card Sorting
- Add-x Task
- Maastricht Acute Stress
- Socially Evaluated Cold-Pressor
All these tests were used by researchers, we will discuss each in another article or once we put them all to the test. If you are willing to start your experiment, take this information into consideration it might be helpful.
Now we already tested the mental arithmetic, if you would like to check how it works click this link: http://htiweb.tic.heia-fr.ch/stress-app/
All this work and effort is credited to Mathias C. Fuchs
Further reading:
If you would like to know more about Empathic Labs check out Jacky Casas introductory article here.
If you would like to check our latest project press here.
