Becker Linda, Heimerl Alexander, André Elisabeth
Chair of Health Psychology, Department of Psychology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.
Chair for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Institute of Computer Science, Universität Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 19;14:1182959. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1182959. eCollection 2023.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, working environments and private lives have changed dramatically. Digital technologies and media have become more and more important and have found their way into nearly all private and work environments. Communication situations have been largely relocated to virtual spaces. One of these scenarios is digital job interviews. Job interviews are usually-also in the non-digital world-perceived as stressful and associated with biological stress responses. We here present and evaluate a newly developed laboratory stressor that is based on a digital job interview-scenario.
= 45 healthy people participated in the study (64.4% female; mean age: 23.2 ± 3.6 years; mean body mass index = 22.8 ± 4.0 kg/m). Salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) and cortisol were assessed as measures for biological stress responses. Furthermore, perceived stress was rated at the time points of the saliva samplings. The job interviews lasted between 20 and 25 min. All materials, including instructions for the experimenter (i.e., the job interviewer) and the data set used for statistical analysis, as well as a multimodal data set, which includes further measures, are publicly available.
Typical subjective and biological stress-response patterns were found, with peak sAA and perceived stress levels observed immediately after the job interviews and peak cortisol concentrations 5 min afterwards. Female participants experienced the scenario as more stressful than male participants. Cortisol peaks were higher for participants who experienced the situation as a threat in comparison to participants who experienced it as a challenge. Associations between the strength of the stress response with further person characteristics and psychological variables such as BMI, age, coping styles, and personality were not found.
Overall, our method is well-suited to induce biological and perceived stress, mostly independent of person characteristics and psychological variables. The setting is naturalistic and easily implementable in standardized laboratory settings.
自新冠疫情以来，工作环境和私人生活发生了巨大变化。数字技术和媒体变得越来越重要，并已进入几乎所有私人和工作环境。交流场景大多转移到了虚拟空间。其中一种场景就是数字求职面试。求职面试通常——在非数字世界也是如此——被视为有压力的，并与生物应激反应相关。我们在此展示并评估一种基于数字求职面试场景新开发的实验室应激源。
45名健康人参与了该研究（64.4%为女性；平均年龄：23.2±3.6岁；平均体重指数=22.8±4.0kg/m）。唾液α淀粉酶（sAA）和皮质醇作为生物应激反应的指标进行评估。此外，在唾液采样时间点对感知压力进行评分。求职面试持续20至25分钟。所有材料，包括给实验者（即求职面试官）的说明、用于统计分析的数据集以及包含更多测量指标的多模态数据集均公开可用。
发现了典型的主观和生物应激反应模式，求职面试后立即观察到sAA和感知压力水平峰值，5分钟后皮质醇浓度达到峰值。女性参与者比男性参与者感受到该场景压力更大。与将该情况视为挑战的参与者相比，将该情况视为威胁的参与者皮质醇峰值更高。未发现应激反应强度与其他个人特征和心理变量（如体重指数、年龄、应对方式和性格）之间的关联。
总体而言，我们的方法非常适合诱发生物应激和感知应激，大多不受个人特征和心理变量的影响。该设置是自然主义的，并且在标准化实验室环境中易于实施。
