PSY001 Foundations to Psychology

Introduction 

Stress is a type of change in the human body that causes physical, emotional, or psychological strain (Glazer & Liu, 2017). Usually, stress is the body’s reaction to circumstances that require attention or action. Traditionally, stress was viewed as a condition that could harm people and their performance on cognitive tasks such as working memory (Wendorf & Brouwer, 2018). The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat suggests that if our appraisal of a stressful event changes, our physiological and psychological states will change as well. Consequently, a test of two types of appraisal should yield different levels of psychological response and performance on a cognitive task. This experiment aims to investigate whether a cognitive reappraisal of stress would result in a change in the physiological and psychological responses to stress and subsequent influence on executive function. Therefore, the research question transpires as to whether changing the cognitive appraisal of stress and subsequent differences in levels of physiological arousal, predicts changes in cognitive performance. The individual cognitive appraisal of stress will be manipulated using short videos showing that stress could be viewed as enhancing or debilitating performance on a cognitive task while the effects on the responses will be measured in the form of heart rate and working memory performance. The hypotheses are that; the stress appraisal and physiological arousal are higher in the debilitating condition than the enhancing condition, the working memory performance to better in the stress enhancing condition than the stress debilitating condition, and Stress appraisal and physiological arousal are good predictors of changes in cognitive performance.

Background

Stress is a change in the body that leads to physical, emotional, or psychological strain (Glazer & Liu, 2017). Stress is usually a result of a reaction to a phenomenon that requires attention or action from the body. Traditionally, stress was viewed as a condition that could impact negatively individuals and their performance on cognitive tasks such as working memory (Wendorf & Brouwer, 2018). An experiment conducted by Moore, Vine, Wilson & Freeman (2012), to examine the impact of challenge and threat states on golf putting performance and several possible mechanisms indicates that the challenge group performed much better, reported favorable emotions, and displayed highly effective gazes that the threat group, suggesting that challenge and threat states had an impact at the performance at a predominantly kinematic level.   

The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat suggests that if our appraisal of a stressful event changes, our physiological and psychological states will change as well (Blascovich & Mendes, 2010). Based on the model when the body is in active pursuit of a goal, the psychological processes reliably lead to the cardiovascular responses acting in specific patterns. However, since it is almost impossible to access the psychological processes, the model suggests that that the application of cardiovascular responses to make inferences on the psychological states can provide significantly valuable insights. Therefore, in the context, challenge can be evaluated from high resources and low demands and the inverse is the case for threats. Challenge and threats change the heartbeat rates with challenge resulting in dilation of arteries hence more blood pumped, whereas threat leads to constriction and hence less blood pumped (Seery, 2013).

Crum, et al., (2017) experimented whether cognitive, physiological, and affective stress responses could be varied independent of situation-specifics evaluations. To achieve their objectives, they by altering the participant’s mindset about the nature of stress in general by manipulating the stress mindset using multi-media film clips orienting the participants to either enhancing or debilitating nature and manipulating. Additionally, they manipulated the challenge and threat evaluations by providing positive or negative feedback to the participants' social stress test. The result of their experiment showed that under both challenge and threat stress conditions, a stress-is-enhancing mindset produced better cognitive flexibility and positive affect that heightened attentional bias toward positive stimuli. On the contrary, a stress-is-debilitating condition produced worse cognitive and affective outcomes.

In this experiment, we use the same methodology as Crum, et al., (2017) to investigate whether a cognitive reappraisal of stress would result in a change in the physiological and psychological responses to stress and subsequent influence on executive function. The individual cognitive appraisal of stress will be manipulated using short videos showing that stress could be viewed as enhancing or debilitating performance on a cognitive task while the effects on the responses will be measured in the form of heart rate and working memory performance. Methods

Participants.

A total of 124 participated in the experiment. Their responses were randomly sampled to obtain a sample size of n = 69 that was used in the analysis. The participants were second-year Psychology undergraduates at UoB. In the final sample, the participants comprised 59 female students and 10 male students. The ages of the participants (M =25.23, SD = 6.94) were between 18years and 50 years. Therefore, the range was 32 years. The participants completed the experiment as part of the class required under adherence to guidelines set by the instructor.

 Research Design

The experiment was a repeated measure design since the same participants participated in all measurements of the experiment. The predictor variables were the cognitive appraisal ratios which represented the change in physiological arousal between baseline and post-experiment recordings. On the other hand, the outcome variable was the performance on the N-back (working memory task). There were two conditions in the experiment; the stress debilitating condition and the stress enhancing condition.

Materials.

The materials used in the experiment included a stress appraisal questionnaire, a heart rate recording device, and an N-Back task. The Stress appraisal questionnaire comprised of two questions with Likert scale responses ranging from 1 (Not at all) to 6 (Extremely). The questions related to how demanding the participants expected the arithmetic task to be and how much they were able to cope with it. The final score was calculated as a ratio between the two questions. On the other hand, the heart rate recording device was used to measure the heart rate by taking the pulse after the relaxation video and again after the stress task. The change between the two pulse rates was taken as the measure of physiological response to the stress task. Lastly, the N-Back task was used to measure the working memory performance and presented via a web browser.

Procedure

The instructor provided background information regarding the experiment and the objectives it was expected to meet. The participants were provided with a consent form to fill that they understood the intent and terms of the experiment. Before beginning the experiment, the participants watched a relaxing video. Thereafter, the participants were required to measure the base heart rate. The base heart rate was measured using participant’s watch/clock or the stopwatch on their phones by timing a 15 second period. The participants were then asked to fill an appraisal questionnaire after which they were required to watch an enhancing or a debilitating stress video and fill the appraisal questionnaire once again. Once these steps were completed, the participant undertook a stress task that involved mental arithmetic. Immediately after completion of the stress task, the participants were required to quickly take their pulse and write it down. Later, they undertook the N-back task and filler tasks after which they rinsed and repeated the experiment with other videos on stress. Once all the participants were done with the experiment, the data collected was compiled and put into an SPSS spreadsheet for use in further analysis.

The descriptive statistics above indicate that the N-Back score for the stress enhancing condition (M = 41.65, SD = 6.00) was higher than in the debilitating condition (M = 40.75, SD = 6.82). On the other hand, the stress appraisal score was higher in the debilitating condition (M = .83, SD = .48) than in the enhancing condition (M = .77, SD = .40). Lastly, the change arousal was higher in the debilitating condition (M = 6.00, SD = 9.16) than in the enhancing condition (M = 4.52, SD =10.88).

Inferential Statistics

T-test

The t-test was conducted to see whether the video watched about stress was successful in changing the appraisal stress. There was no significant change in appraisal after watching the stress appraisal video for the stress debilitating condition, t (68) = -.22, p = .824, 95% CI [-.08, .06]; or for the enhancing condition, t (68) = .77, p = .446, 95% CI [-.05, .11].

Multiple Linear Regression

Two sets of multiple linear regression models were used. The first regression model was used to predict the N-Back score for the debilitating condition from the stress appraisal and change in heart rate for the condition. On the other hand, the second regression model was used to predict the N-Back score for the enhancing condition from the stress appraisal and change in heart rate for the condition. While checking the assumptions of the linear regression, it was noted that there was a linear relationship between the predictor and outcome variables, the variables were not normally distributed, the non-zero variance assumption was violated indicating that two participants pressed M on every trial. These were removed. Lastly, there existed five outliers but they were removed.

In the first multiple regression model for the stress debilitating condition, stress appraisal and change in physiological arousal did not significantly predict working memory performance, F (2, 66) =.29, P=.75, adj R² = -.021. Stress appraisal and physiological arousal explained 2.1% of the variation in working memory performance. If the stress appraisal was increased by 1-unit change (towards a threat appraisal), the N-back score increased by 1.31 (95% CI [-2.18, 4.79]). However, this was not significant (p = .457) with a negligible effect (β =.093). On the other hand, if the physiological arousal was increased by 1-unit change, the N-back score decreased by .02 (95% CI [-.21, .16]). However, this was not significant (p = .824) with negligible effect (β = -. 028).

In the second multiple regression model for stress in the condition, stress appraisal and change in physiological arousal did not significantly predict working memory performance, F (2, 66) =.82, P=.45, adj R² = -.005. Stress appraisal and physiological arousal explained 0.5% of the variation in working memory performance. If the stress appraisal was increased by 1-unit change (towards a threat appraisal), the N-back score increased by 1.24 (95% CI [-2.43, 4.91]). However, this was not significant (p = .502) with a negligible effect (β =.083). On the other hand, if the physiological arousal was increased by 1-unit change, the N-back score increased by -07 (95% CI [-.07, .20]). However, this was not significant (p = .342) with negligible effect (β = 0.118).

Discussion and Conclusion

The descriptive results above indicated that the N-Back score for the stress enhancing condition was higher than in the debilitating condition. On the other hand, the stress appraisal score was higher in the debilitating condition than in the enhancing condition, and the change in arousal was higher in the debilitating condition than in the enhancing condition. These results supported our hypothesis on memory work, stress appraisal, change in arousal, and the findings of previous research studies.

The results of the inferential analysis using t-test indicated that there was no significant change in appraisal after watching the stress appraisal video for the stress debilitating and enhancing condition. Additionally, the multiple linear regression models developed to investigate whether stress appraisal and change in arousal were better predictors of N-Back score indicated that these variables did not significantly predict the N-back score for both the stress enhancing and the stress debilitating conditions. The results were against our hypotheses and those of previous research studies that the two variables could be used to predict the N-Back score for working memory. Therefore, to confirm the validity of the results, it is recommended that the experiment be repeated with for a new set of participants. This experimental study can play a vital role in education and institution that intend to study how stress affects the performance and productivity of students and the personnel in the labor force.

References

Blascovich, J., & Mendes, W. B. (2010). Social psychophysiology and embodiment. Handbook of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470561119.socpsy001006

Crum, A. J., et al., (2017). The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 30(4), 379-395. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2016.1275585

Glazer, S., & Liu, C. (2017). Work, stress, coping, and stress management. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.30

Moore, L. J., et al., (2012). The effect of challenge and threat states on performance: An examination of potential mechanisms. Psychophysiology, 49(10), 14171425. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14698986.2012.01449.x

Seery, M. D. (2013). The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat: Using the heart to measure the mind. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(9), 637 653. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12052

Wendorf, A. R., & Brouwer, A. M. (2018). Psychology of stress and coping. Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199828340-0203

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