Hi! I am Kazel from the Department of Psychology at Durham University. Welcome to my poster where in the study, we sought to investigate the role that solitude can play in regulating stress and emotions. 

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In previous research, participants have actually been found to report a decrease in high-arousal negative and an increase in low-arousal positive emotions following a brief period of solitude. To build on these findings, we thought that it would be interesting to look into emotions as evoked by a specific trigger, specifically in this case exposure to stress, which is an everyday experience.

 

We conceptualised stress in two ways, such that stress can be experienced psychologically and physically. Psychological stress is often experienced when there are social threats such as being evaluated or excluded, whereas physical stress is experienced in situations when a continued exertion may pose a potential threat to body tissues

 

Our participants were first brought to the lab and assigned to either a physical stress condition, where they were made to do a rigorous exercise routine that got their heart rate up to 85% of their maximum heart rate. The remaining participants were assigned to the psychological stress one, where they had to present a speech of their dream job in front of 2 judges who looked disinterested. They were also made to do a mental arithmetic task of counting backwards in steps of 5.

 

Following which, all participants were taken to a room where they stayed in solitude for 30 minutes and had no access to any form of social interaction, be it in person or online. They were however given some materials to keep themselves occupied throughout such as puzzles and books

 

Manipulation checks showed that the two forms of stress were successfully induced as seen in these graphs over here where participants in the psychological stress condition are seen to report feeling significantly more ostracised while also feeling more threatened as reflected in the threat over challenge graph. Results of heart rate variability that is seen to dip in the timepoints from prestress to post stress also confirms the induction of stress, as it indicates an increase in physiological stress experienced by the body

 

Results gathered of subjective self-report measures on the other hand show a significant difference in high-arousal negative emotions and low-arousal positive emotions between the two conditions following stress task, which is as we would expect. So participants in the psychological stress condition were significantly more nervous and tense and less calm and relaxed. Importantly, this difference is seen to be non-significant after solitude, where there was a decrease in these negative emotions of the high arousal dimension, and an increase in positive emotions of the low arousal dimensions. Putting these together, this indicates that solitude is actually effective at facilitating the emotional recovery of participants, particularly in the psychological stress condition. 

 

Interestingly, for heart rate variability, physiological recovery is seen to be quicker in participants in the psychological stress condition, as seen in that huge spike in the green line before solitude period even begins. And this level of heart rate variability maintained the same from the start of solitude to the end of solitude.

 

This suggests to us that once participants in the psychological stress condition were removed from the source of stress as they were done with the evaluative task, their physiological states quickly recovered, but strong negative emotions continued to persist and only dropped after solitude.

 

On the other hand, for participants in the physical stress condition, where actual threats were actually posed to the body, we see that physiological recovery is actually slower, even though they did not report to feel greater strong negative emotions but were slightly less calm after the physical activity. 

 

Following this study, it would be interesting to hone in further on individual differences and how this might play out differently, such as for example, could solitude as a form of regulatory mechanism be beneficial or detrimental to individuals high in neuroticism. It would also be interesting to look further into the form of regulation strategies that can be supported by solitude as it can provide us with a more complete picture of the what and hows of solitude and how this can link to various well-being measures  

 

I have come to the end of my presentation and thank you for your time.