Author(s): Kelsey Peterson, Isabella Hixon, Brecken Spencer
Mentor(s): Claudia Jorgensen
Institution UVU
When exposed to stressful situations, the human nervous system reacts with activation of the fight or flight response—causing an increase in breathing rate, body temperature, heart rate, and sweating (Sriram et.al, 2012). There is mounting evidence implicating chronic stress to be physiologically and psychologically harmful. For example, recent research found a correlation between chronic stress and the development of mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. Stress is an inevitable aspect of human life that can vary in duration and intensity. For college students, stress might originate from environmental factors such as finances, social stressors, assignment deadlines, exams, or presentations in front of classmates and professors (Davies & Craske, 2015). Developing healthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress could positively influence the academic performance of college students and it might improve and maintain their psychological and physiological well-being (Skowronek, 2014). Given the demand for math skills in psychology students, we aim to better understand the stress response induced by completing a calculation task. We hypothesize that the completion of a calculation task will alter physiological measures including heart rate, skin conductance (aka sweating), skin temperature, as well as heart rate variability. We further predict that the self-reported level of stress is correlated with the number of errors during the calculation task.