Physiological Mapping and Day Reconstruction

Stress mapping is part of a larger project which aims to reconstruct how people feel over the course of a normal day. The project has charted how mood varies due to time of day and how this interacts with where you are, the activities you're engaged in, the presence of others, and whether you're interacting with friends, relatives, or a partner. 

We have also examined how changes in heart rate and affect over a day link to economic decision-making (see link to IDEAS paper below). This work showed that a pattern of heart activity related to flexible responding to environmental demands was a good indicator of who was willing to wait for a real delayed reward.

Another aspect of this work focuses on links between subjective feelings and hormonal and cardiovascular stress markers monitored in real-time over the course of a day. Our approach is to build a comprehensive picture of what is happening in the person's life and their own physiological and psychological make-up in order to be able to identify how emotional and physical stress are linked in normal life settings.


For more on the background to this research visit Geary Well-being, follow the links below, or sign your email address below to be updated on developments in the stress mapping project.