TY - GEN
T1 - Evoking Stress Reactivity in a Virtual Dance Competition
AU - van Dammen, Lotte
AU - Barnett, Neil
AU - Conrady, Roselynn
AU - Wright, Lucas
AU - Thymes, Bradon
AU - Shirtcliff, Elizabeth A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation REU site SPIRE-EIT under IIS-1757900 (PI?s Eliot Winer and Stephen Gilbert). Special thanks to SPIT lab members, VRAC infrastructure, Vijay Kiran Kalivarapu and Tor Finseth.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Stress reactivity involves a physiological response to a stressful task, as a biological mechanism related to mental and physical health outcomes. Traditional stressors evoke social evaluative threat, which is fear of judgment and a threat to social status, typically via public speaking tasks. To be well-suited for virtual reality, however, a novel approach is necessary in the design of new stress tasks. We hypothesized that a virtual reality stress task involving social evaluative threat through a dance competition in front of an audience, elicits a stress response, measured by autonomic nervous system, cortisol, and testosterone reactivity. Participants (n = 18) showed autonomic nervous system reactivity in terms of increased heart rate and decreased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, indicating a stress response. Levels of cortisol increased in response to the dance competition, especially within responders, whereas testosterone levels did not change significantly over time. A virtual reality dance competition involving physical social evaluative threat elicits a stress response.
AB - Stress reactivity involves a physiological response to a stressful task, as a biological mechanism related to mental and physical health outcomes. Traditional stressors evoke social evaluative threat, which is fear of judgment and a threat to social status, typically via public speaking tasks. To be well-suited for virtual reality, however, a novel approach is necessary in the design of new stress tasks. We hypothesized that a virtual reality stress task involving social evaluative threat through a dance competition in front of an audience, elicits a stress response, measured by autonomic nervous system, cortisol, and testosterone reactivity. Participants (n = 18) showed autonomic nervous system reactivity in terms of increased heart rate and decreased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, indicating a stress response. Levels of cortisol increased in response to the dance competition, especially within responders, whereas testosterone levels did not change significantly over time. A virtual reality dance competition involving physical social evaluative threat elicits a stress response.
KW - Dance competition
KW - Stress reactivity
KW - Virtual reality
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85088264287
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-51064-0_7
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-51064-0_7
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 9783030510633
VL - 1206 AISC
T3 - Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing
SP - 48
EP - 55
BT - Advances in Simulation and Digital Human Modeling - Proceedings of the AHFE 2020 Virtual Conferences on Human Factors and Simulation, and Digital Human Modeling and Applied Optimization
PB - Springer
T2 - AHFE Virtual Conference on Human Factors and Simulation and the International Conference on Digital Human Modeling and Applied Optimization, 2020
Y2 - 1 January 2021
ER -