Abstract
The Sing-a-Song Stress Test (SSST) was recently developed as an alternative to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) to investigate autonomic nervous system responses to social-evaluative stress. In the SSST, participants are suddenly cued to sing a song in the presence of confederates. However, the SSST is still quite long (~15min) and the requirement for confederates makes it labor-intensive. The current study tested whether a shorter (~6.5min), single-experimenter, version of the SSST can still reliably elicit subjective and physiological stress reactivity. Our sample consisted of 87 healthy young adult participants (age range: 18-35years). During the short SSST and a speeded reaction time task, in which aversive loud tones were to be avoided (TA), we measured heart period (HP), sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity using pre-ejection-period (PEP), skin conductance level (SCL), and non-specific skin conductance responses (ns.SCR), and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity using respiratory-sinus-arrhythmia (RSA) and the root-mean-square of successive differences (RMSSD). The short SSST induced significant decreases in positive affect and increases in negative affect. MANOVAs on the clusters of SNS and PNS variables showed that the short SSST elicited significant HP (-118.46ms), PEP (-7.76ms), SCL (+4.85 μS), ns.SCR (+8.42 peaks/min) and RMSSD (-14.67) reactivity. Affective, SNS, and PNS reactivity to the new SSST social-evaluative stress task were of comparable magnitude to that evoked by the TA mental stressor. We conclude that the short SSST is a valid and cost-effective task for large scaled studies to induce social-evaluative stress to a sufficient degree to evoke measurable changes in PNS and SNS activity and affective state.
Highlights
The importance of having valid tests for different kind of stressors originates from the idea that different stressors lead to different stress responses within individuals, known as the response specificity theory (Bosch et al, 2009; Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004; Skoluda et al, 2015)
To test whether the short Stress Test (SSST) affected subjective reporting of positive and negative affect and whether this effect was similar to the to be avoided (TA) task, Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed
The current study shows that a shorter and more practical version of the SSST still effectively induces social-evaluative stress reflected by both affective responses and physiological reactivity
Summary
The importance of having valid tests for different kind of stressors originates from the idea that different stressors lead to different stress responses within individuals, known as the response specificity theory (Bosch et al, 2009; Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004; Skoluda et al, 2015) This theory is grounded in the belief that different physiological response patterns have evolved to effectively cope with the variety of different stressors (Weiner, 1992). While the TSST reliably evokes significant social-evaluative stress, it was primarily designed to induce prolonged stress to measure the slow responding adrenocortical axis reactivity. To investigate autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity to social-evaluative stress (e.g. through cardiac and electrodermal activity (EDA) responses), which are much faster, a shorter test that is easier to implement would be preferred
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