•Block design eliciting “low-high-low-high” acute mental stress variation profile.•Systematical analysis of the reliability and sensitivity of the prominent HRV metrics (N = 42) for assessing acute ...stress.•About one third of the HRV metrics robustly track the momentary change of acute mental stress.•About half of the HRV metrics respectively hold relative and absolute reliability, while only one fifth hold both.
Mental stress has become a major health threat in our society and its continuous monitoring and timely intervention is key to stress management. Heart rate variability (HRV) has been considered as a potential candidate for ecological momentary assessment of acute mental stress, and growing number of HRV metrics have been developed. However, inconsistency of findings in prior studies necessitates further investigation on what are the appropriate metrics in tracking the momentary variation of mental stress. This study employs a block design inducing low-high-low-high stress variation profile to test the feasibility of a broad range of HRV metrics for measuring the minute-scale stress variation elicited by the commonly used mental arithmetic tasks. After extracting the RR interval series, 42 HRV metrics have been examined in absolute reliability, relative reliability, and the statistical significance in differentiating the low and high stress levels. Among these metrics, 22 show absolute reliability, 21 show relative reliability, and 13 differentiate the low and high stress levels consistently across all four pairs of comparison. Venn’s diagram analysis resulted eight metrics hold both absolute and relative reliability, whereas those metrics robustly differentiating high and low stress levels hold either absolute (3/13) or relative (10/13) reliability. Our results show that, although not all HRV metrics hold both absolute and relative reliability, about one third of the examined HRV metrics can effectively track the variations of mental stress. These findings suggest the importance of HRV metrics selection when applied for monitoring acute mental stress.
In the development of the next generation computer-aided design (CAD) systems, it is important to consider systematically the interactions between designers and design tools. As one of the first ...steps in quantifying such relations, we propose a method to investigate the relation between a designer’s mental stress and mental effort. We hypothesize that mental effort is low at low and high stress levels but high at a medium stress level. To test the hypothesis, we conducted experiments on seven subjects. Design activities, body movements, brain signals and heart rate were recorded during a design process. Mental stress was quantified by LF/HF ratio and mental effort was quantified by EEG energy. The statistical analysis shows that mental effort is the lowest at high stress level and there is no significant difference in mental effort between medium stress level and low stress level.
•We propose a new approach to process EEG and HRV signals for design activities.•We assume that an inverse U curve relationship exists between mental effort and mental stress.•We found that designers’ mental effort is the lowest at the highest mental stress.•There is no significant difference in mental effort at low and medium stress levels.
The social identity/self‐categorization model of stress suggests that social identity can play a role in protecting group members from adverse reactions to strain because it provides a basis for ...group members to receive and benefit from social support. To examine this model, two studies were conducted with groups exposed to extreme levels of strain: patients recovering from heart surgery (Study 1), bomb disposal officers and bar staff (Study 2). Consistent with predictions, in both studies there was a strong positive correlation between social identification and both social support and life/job satisfaction and a strong negative correlation between social identification and stress. In both studies path analysis also indicated that social support was a significant mediator of the relationship between (a) social identification and stress and (b) social identification and life/job satisfaction. In addition, Study 2 revealed that group membership plays a significant role in perceptions of how stressful different types of work are. Implications for the conceptualization of stress and social support are discussed.
This article covers the feasibility of electrogastrogram (EGG) in multi-modal mental stress assessment in conjunction with electrocardiogram (ECG) and respiratory signal (RESP). In this study, ...twenty-one healthy participants were repeatedly relaxed, stressed, and highly stressed according to our experimental protocol, which was based on combined arithmetic and Stroop tasks, and their EGG, ECG, and RESP were simultaneously captured. Subsequently, various features were extracted from the signals, and correlation analysis was performed between mental stress levels and the features, especially the EGG features. Furthermore, conventional machine learning models were optimized and validated to verify the feasibility of EGG in mental stress detection. Some EGG features exhibited significant correlation to mental stress levels (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\rho _{bi,menaDP} = -0.187 </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\rho _{multi,meanDP} = -0.177 </tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{p} < 0.001 </tex-math></inline-formula>). The correlation degree was comparable to that of the RESP features. The EGG features largely reflected individual differences regarding mental stress response compared to the ECG and RESP features. Most importantly, the utilization of the EGG features along with the ECG and RESP features significantly improved the accuracy of several models by up to 8% regarding mental stress detection. Especially, logistic regression exhibited moderate accuracy in detecting mental stress (70.15% accuracy and 0.741 area under the receiver operating characteristic curve). We believe that EGG monitoring could significantly contribute to in-depth mental stress evaluation, and potentially be used for the development of real-time mental stress monitoring system and personalized mental stress assessment modality.
This study examined how peer relationships (i.e., sociometric and perceived popularity) and teacher–child relationships (i.e., support and conflict) impact one another throughout late childhood. The ...sample included 586 children (46% boys), followed annually from Grades 4 to 6 (M age.wave1 = 9.26 years). Autoregressive cross-lagged modeling was applied. Results stress the importance of peer relationships in shaping teacher–child relationships and vice versa. Higher sociometric popularity predicted more teacher–child support, which in turn predicted higher sociometric popularity, beyond changes in children's prosocial behavior. Higher perceived popularity predicted more teacher–child conflict (driven by children's aggressive behavior), which, in turn and in itself, predicted higher perceived popularity. The influence of the "invisible hand" of both teachers and peers in classrooms has been made visible.
This study examines the relationship among neighborhood stressors, stress-buffering mechanisms, and likelihood of alcohol, drug, and mental health (ADM) disorders in adults from 60 US communities (
...n=12,716). Research shows that larger support structures may interact with individual support factors to affect mental health, but few studies have explored buffering effects of these neighborhood characteristics. We test a conceptual model that explores effects of neighborhood stressors and stress-buffering mechanisms on ADM disorders. Using Health Care for Communities with census and other data, we found a lower likelihood of disorders in neighborhoods with a greater presence of stress-buffering mechanisms. Higher neighborhood average household occupancy and churches per capita were associated with a lower likelihood of disorders. Cross-level interactions revealed that violence-exposed individuals in high crime neighborhoods are vulnerable to depressive/anxiety disorders. Likewise, individuals with low social support in neighborhoods with high social isolation (i.e., low-average household occupancy) had a higher likelihood of disorders. If replicated by future studies using longitudinal data, our results have implications for policies and programs targeting neighborhoods to reduce ADM disorders.
Although research on coping over the past 30 years has produced convergent evidence about the functions of coping and the factors that influence it, psychologists still have a great deal to learn ...about how coping mechanisms affect diverse outcomes. One of the reasons more progress has not been made is the almost exclusive focus on negative outcomes in the stress process. Coping theory and research need to consider positive outcomes as well. The authors focus on one such outcome, positive affect, and review findings about the co-occurrence of positive affect with negative affect during chronic stress, the adaptive functions of positive affect during chronic stress, and a special class of meaning-based coping processes that support positive affect during chronic stress.
Social comparison processes in organizations Greenberg, Jerald; Ashton-James, Claire E.; Ashkanasy, Neal M.
Organizational behavior and human decision processes,
2007, 2007-01-00, 2007-1-00, 20070101, Letnik:
102, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We systematically analyze the role of social comparison processes in organizations. Specifically, we describe how social comparison processes have been used to explain six key areas of organizational ...inquiry: (1) organizational justice, (2) performance appraisal, (3) virtual work environments, (4) affective behavior in the workplace, (5) stress, and (6) leadership. Additionally, we describe how unique contextual factors in organizations offer new insight into two widely studied sub-processes of social comparison, acquiring social information and thinking about that information. Our analyses underscore the merit of integrating organizational phenomena and social comparison processes in future research and theory.
Using comparative data from five countries, this study investigates the psychometric properties of the effort–reward imbalance (ERI) at work model. In this model, chronic work-related stress is ...identified as non-reciprocity or imbalance between high efforts spent and low rewards received. Health-adverse effects of this imbalance were documented in several prospective and cross-sectional investigations. The internal consistency, discriminant validity and factorial structure of ‘effort’, ‘reward’, and ‘overcommitment’ scales are evaluated, using confirmatory factor analysis. Moreover, content (or external) validity is explored with respect to a measure of self-reported health.
Data for the analysis is derived from epidemiologic studies conducted in five European countries: the Somstress Study (Belgium;
n=3796), the GAZEL-Cohort Study (France;
n=10,174), the WOLF-Norrland Study (Sweden;
n=960), the Whitehall II Study (UK;
n=3697) and the Public Transport Employees Study (Germany;
n=316). Internal consistency of the scales was satisfactory in all samples, and the factorial structure of the scales was consistently confirmed (all goodness of fit measures were >0.92). Moreover, in 12 of 14 analyses, significantly elevated odds ratios of poor health were observed in employees scoring high on the ERI scales.
In conclusion, a psychometrically well-justified measure of work-related stress (ERI) grounded in sociological theory is available for comparative socioepidemiologic investigations. In the light of the importance of work for adult health such investigations are crucial in advanced societies within and beyond Europe.
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