Abstract
Anxiety is a complex emotion characterized by an unpleasant feeling of tension when people anticipate a threat or negative consequence. It is regarded as a comprehensive reflection of human thought processes, physiological arousal, and external stimuli. The actual state of emotion can be represented objectively by human physiological signals. This study aims to analyze the differences of ECG (electrocardiogram) characteristics for various types of drivers under anxiety. We used several methods to induce drivers’ mood states (calm and anxiety) and then conducted the real and virtual driving experiments to collect driver’s ECG signal data. Physiological changes in ECG during the experiments were recorded using the PSYLAB software. The independent sample t-test analysis was conducted to determine if there are significant differences in ECG characteristics for different types of drivers in anxious state during driving. The results show that there are significant differences in ECG signal characteristics of drivers by gender, age, and driving experience, in time domain, frequency domain, and waveform under anxiety. Our findings of this study contribute to the development of more intelligent and personalized driver warning system, which could improve road traffic safety.
Highlights
According to the statistics, more than 90% of traffic accidents are caused at least in part by human mistakes [1, 2], of which many errors result from drivers’ negative emotional motivations such as anxiety, anger, and contempt
Human emotions have a huge impact on how we live. e choices we make and the actions we take are influenced by the different types of emotions that we experience. ere have been numerous studies to investigate the complex interactions between human emotion and physiological response in social, cultural, and economic fields, including household income [3], cultural diversity [4], physical health [5, 6], purchasing consumption [7, 8], Internet application [9], and environmental impact [10,11,12]
Jaeger et al [10] found that anxious emotion makes people want to eat more spicy snacks and single snack intake compared to their calm state. e study by Zhang et al [7] and Wang
Summary
More than 90% of traffic accidents are caused at least in part by human mistakes [1, 2], of which many errors result from drivers’ negative emotional motivations such as anxiety, anger, and contempt. Ere have been numerous studies to investigate the complex interactions between human emotion and physiological response in social, cultural, and economic fields, including household income [3], cultural diversity [4], physical health [5, 6], purchasing consumption [7, 8], Internet application [9], and environmental impact [10,11,12]. Researchers and scholars have conducted the studies of the correlation between emotional state and driving behavior and explored the influence of human-vehicle-environment factors toward driver’ mood [13,14,15]. There have been few attempts in the past to analyze the influence of driver’s emotions on their behavioral based on physiological signals. Is study focuses on examining the differences of ECG characteristics for various types of drivers in anxious state during driving
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
