1. Evoking Stress Reactivity in a Virtual Dance Competition
- Author
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van Dammen, Lotte, Barnett, Neil, Conrady, Roselynn, Wright, Lucas, Thymes, Bradon, Shirtcliff, Elizabeth A., Cassenti, Daniel N., Scataglini, Sofia, Rajulu, Sudhakar L., Wright, Julia L., Graduate School, APH - Health Behaviors & Chronic Diseases, and Amsterdam Reproduction & Development (AR&D)
- Subjects
Autonomic nervous system ,Dance competition ,Dance ,Mechanism (biology) ,Stress reactivity ,Stressor ,Stress (linguistics) ,Vagal tone ,Reactivity (psychology) ,Psychology ,Virtual reality ,Social status ,Developmental psychology - Abstract
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.
- Published
- 2020