Skip to main content

Wearing a heart on your sleeve

Wearing a heart on your sleeve: new research shows that a tactile heartbeat significantly reduces stress

  • Date18 October 2018

Research published in Scientific Reports shows that a heartbeat-like vibration delivered onto the inside of the wrist can make the wearer feel significantly less stressed.

Doppel units - Psychology News

doppel units

In work that was recently featured in the BBC's The One Show, researchers from the Psychology Department at Royal Holloway, University of London assessed the calming effects of a new wearable device called doppel - a wristband designed to actively reduce stress by using the intuitive responses that we all have to rhythm, and especially to heartbeats.

Humans naturally respond to rhythm. For example, the tempo of a song can naturally alter our breathing and heart rates. Slower tempos result in lower arousal and positive or calm emotional states, while we associate fast rhythms with arousing emotional states such as joy, excitement, surprise, fear or anger. Beyond music, several studies report similar effects in responses to biological rhythms, and the heartbeat is perhaps the most ubiquitous biological rhythm in nature. “Not only high arousal is physiologically correlated with increased heart rate whereas calmness is physiologically correlated with lower heart rate, but we also intuitively associate higher and lower heart rate with anxiety or high arousal, and calmness respectively” as Professor Tsakiris who led the study said. “The design of doppel, the device that we used in our study, was inspired by these insights”. 

To test the efficacy of doppel, the researchers exposed volunteers to a socially stressful situation and measured their physiological arousal and their reported anxiety levels. 

In a controlled, single-blind study, two groups of participants were asked to prepare a public speech - a widely used psychological task that consistently increases stress. All participants wore the device on their wrist and a cover story was used to suggest to participants that the device was measuring blood pressure during the anticipation of the task. Importantly, for only one of the two groups of participants, the device was turned on and delivered a heartbeat-like vibration at a slower frequency than the participants’ resting heart rate, while they were preparing their speech.

The researchers measured both physiological arousal and subjective reports of anxiety. The use of doppel had a tangible and measurable calming effect across both physiological and psychological levels. Only the participants who felt the heartbeat-like vibration displayed lower increases in skin conductance responses and lower anxiety levels. “Wearable devices are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, but across the board their primary aim is to quantify our activity. The results we got suggest that, rather than measuring ourselves, we can instead harvest our natural responses to heartbeat like rhythms in ways that can assist people in their everyday life.” said Professor Tsakiris.

In 2015/16 stress accounted for 37% of all work-related ill-health cases and 45% of all working days lost due to ill health. doppel’s CEO Dr Fotini Markopoulou commented: “doppel aims to create a sensory experience to help people manage the pressures of time and stress in their daily lives. Whilst research shows that meditation and mindfulness can help to reduce stress over time, most of us don’t have this time to practice. Using doppel is a natural and distraction-free way to help the wearer to feel calmer, within moments, and when and where they want.”

The article 

Azevedo RT, Bennett N, Bilicki A, Hooper J, Markopoulou F & Tsakiris M (2017) The calming effect of a new wearable device during the anticipation of public speech. Scientific Reports, DOI : 10.1038/s41598-017-02274-2 will be freely available online at www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-02274-2 

Explore Royal Holloway

Get help paying for your studies at Royal Holloway through a range of scholarships and bursaries.

There are lots of exciting ways to get involved at Royal Holloway. Discover new interests and enjoy existing ones.

Heading to university is exciting. Finding the right place to live will get you off to a good start.

Whether you need support with your health or practical advice on budgeting or finding part-time work, we can help.

Discover more about our academic departments and schools.

Find out why Royal Holloway is in the top 25% of UK universities for research rated ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’.

Royal Holloway is a research intensive university and our academics collaborate across disciplines to achieve excellence.

Discover world-class research at Royal Holloway.

Discover more about who we are today, and our vision for the future.

Royal Holloway began as two pioneering colleges for the education of women in the 19th century, and their spirit lives on today.

We’ve played a role in thousands of careers, some of them particularly remarkable.

Find about our decision-making processes and the people who lead and manage Royal Holloway today.