Will You Take Derby's Stress Challenge?
11 March 2011
From left to right: Kornanong Yuenyongchaiwat, Kevin Cheung and Professor David Sheffield.
We hope to be able to monitor how people's cardiovascular systems respond to differing types of challenges
”Professor David Sheffield, Assistant Centre Head of the Psychological Research Centre at the University of Derby.
How would your body cope in stressful situations when there is nowhere to hide - and what long-term health impacts might result?
That's one of the aims of a University of Derby study which is to be conducted by psychologists over the next few weeks. They are looking for 200 willing participants from the general public in the region to take part.
Volunteers will be asked to:
- keep their hand in cold water for a minute at a temperature of just seven degrees centigrade (visually, it will look like participants plunging their hand into a basin so cold that frozen mist is coming off the surface)
- demand that a shop honours an advertised price for an expensive item (like a TV) in front of a camera as part of a live television interview
- take part in taxing arithmetic tests.
The Derby team will monitor participants' blood pressure and see if they can establish a correlation between stressful and challenging situations and hypertension leading to heart disease in later life.
They will use a continuous blood pressure monitor belt and finger cuffs - used by NASA in other experiments - to gauge people's reactions to the stressful situations. Crucially, the equipment will help monitor if there are changes in the diameter of participants' arteries during the challenges.
The fundamental reason for the study is to look at how stress responses correlate to blood pressure levels in the future; i.e. can psychologists predict who might be at risk of high blood pressure and heart disease?
Professor David Sheffield, Assistant Centre Head of the Psychological Research Centre, at the University of Derby, said: "We are interested in finding out how people cope in these situations.
"We hope to be able to monitor how people's cardiovascular systems respond to differing types of challenges. What are the types of responses in terms of coping and physiology, and their blood pressure?
"We will then contact the participants in a year's time to see how their blood pressure has changed, if at all, in that time."
In particular, gauging any changes to the diameter of the arteries in someone's body could help the team to see if there are links between the stressful event and the ways in which people can cope with it to control their blood pressure.
As part of a further experiment using the same scenarios, Professor Sheffield hopes to work with people with known cardiovascular risk factors including high blood pressure and obesity.
Professor Sheffield will be working with Thai PhD student Kornanong Yuenyongchaiwat, who is sponsored by Thammasat University Bankok.
The study will be conducted in the human psychology laboratories at the University's Kedleston Road site. If you are interested in taking part, please email Kornanong via email at: k.yuenyongchaivat@derby.co.uk or call 01332-592038 or email David Sheffield, at d.sheffield@derby.ac.uk
For more information contact Deputy Head of Corporate Relations Simon Redfern on 01332 591942 or 07748 920038 or email s.redfern@derby.ac.uk
