Physiological indicators of stress reaction
’ acute stress reaction
BLOOD, PHYSIOLOGICAL STRESS
We used four physiological indicators to assess participants’ acute stress reaction (blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and skin conductance level (SCL), which were obtained either by wearable biomonitoring sensors or calculation.Blood pressure is correlated with the force the blood exerts on the vascular walls [Closely correlates with BP, HR is a measurement for heartbeat frequency (bpm) [Momentary measures of BP were conducted immediately before and after the exposure to each virtual scene, while HR and SCL were measured continuously throughout the experiment. HRV was manually calculated based on the measured HR by the formula above. To supplement those physiological stress measures, we also collected self-reported stress levels during the experiment. Participants were asked to rate their current stress levels immediately after the exposure to each scene with a range from 1 to 5 (no decimal) where 1 refers to “not stressful” and 5 denotes “extremely stressful.” We calculated the difference in the stress levels between the biophilic interventions and the control non-biophilic scene.