Physiological reactions to acute stressors and subjective stress during daily life: A systematic review on ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies

Abstract

Objective This review aims to provide an overview of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies analyzing stress reactivity during daily life in terms of direct and moderated influence of acute stress on physiological responses. Materials and methods A systematic literature search was performed on November 29, 2021 using Web of Science, MEDLINE and PsycINFO to identify prospective EMA studies targeting acute stressors or stress under naturalistic conditions, without restrictions of publication date or population. Study quality was assessed for multiple EMA-specific sources of bias. Results Out of 4285 non-duplicate records, 107 publications involving 104 unique studies were included. The majority of studies assessed acute physiological stress responses primarily through salivary cortisol (n = 59) and cardiovascular outcomes (n = 32). Most studies performed at least three measurements per day (n = 59), and had a moderate risk of recall bias (n = 68) and confounding (n = 85). Fifty-four studies reported a compliance of ≥80%. Direct, non-moderated positive associations were observed between acute stress exposure and concurrent cortisol levels (44%, n = 11/25), systolic (44%, 8/18) and diastolic blood pressure (53%, 8/15) and heart rate (53%, 9/17). Several inter- and intra-individual moderators were identified, such as age, gender, health status, chronic stress, work-related resources, physical activity and stress coping indicators. Conclusions About half of the reviewed EMA studies demonstrated direct associations between everyday acute stress exposure and physiological responses, including increased cortisol levels, blood pressure and heart rate. Results further suggested various moderator variables that could help develop tailored prevention strategies and identify groups at higher risk for dysfunctional stress responses. Registration PROSPERO—Reg.-No.: PROSPERO 2020 CRD42020163178.

Acute and chronic stress associations with blood pressure: An ecological momentary assessment study on an app-based platform

“…Field studies examining these relationships in naturalistic settings have demonstrated the importance of measuring BP and stress in daily life (e.g., (8)). However, these studies often have small sample sizes or short study duration (e.g., 24 hours or a few days) (9,10), given the difficulty to scale up the collection of physiological data.…”

Impact of Relaxation Techniques on Occupational Stress among Working Women

“…Although everyone responds to stress in some way, everyone's response to stress is highly different. When faced with a significant distress, some people experience a rapid increase in heartbeat, while others have stiffness event cinching in the belly (Johansson et al, 1996;Weber et al, 2022). Stress is a necessary component of life, and a person cannot avoid it easily because they suffer from different situation in their lives (Rux et al, 2020).…”

Correcting myths about stress and memory: a commentary on Pezdek and Reisberg, 2022

“…This care in terminology is particularly important for eyewitness studies, which often involve complex scenarios that likely produce many other effects, including the impact of arousal, divided attention, perceptual phenomena, or cognitive load. More studies examining links between self-reported levels of stress and physiological states of stress would be helpful for improving the construct validity of self-report measures, and in turn, will improve application to reality (e.g., Weber et al, 2022). Pezdek and Reisberg (2022) also discredited the (ecological) validity of stress induced by the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; see footnote 2 on p. 146).…”