The Stroop Room : A Wearable Virtual Reality Stress Laboratory Based on the Electrocardiogram

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, stress-related problems and diseases will be one of the major healthcare problems in this decade. Prolonged exposure to stress has been found to reduce immune system functioning and promote secondary diseases like hypertension, arrhythmias, and stroke. In order to combat this development, the relatively young field of stress research needs tools to assess stress levels and reactivity parameters in large populations to advance research especially with respect to work-related stress management. Existing stress research methods like the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) are unsuitable for such endeavors, as they cannot easily be applied at scale. This work introduces a wearable, in-the-wild usable stress laboratory approach. Its prototypical implementation, from wearable-based biosignal recording device up to virtual reality-enhanced mobile stress recognition toolbox, can be used to assess and classify stress and the stress response of users within minutes at scale, without requiring complicated and expensive laboratory evaluations.