Blood pressure diastolic levels track stress better during VR relaxation videos
The Relationship Between Blood Pressure and Self-Reported Stress During Sound-Based VR Relaxation Videos
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
People use virtual reality (VR) to help reduce stress, but it's not clear how well blood pressure reflects how stressed someone feels during VR sessions. The authors had 18 participants watch relaxing 360-degree VR videos with different sound types while measuring their blood pressure and asking how stressed they felt. They found that diastolic blood pressure (the lower number) better matched people’s self-reported stress than systolic pressure (the upper number). Sounds with rhythmic patterns made people feel less stressed than other types.
What this means in practice
- •For mental health app developers: Use diastolic blood pressure as a physiological measure to improve stress detection accuracy during short VR relaxation sessions with varied sound environments.
- •For wearable device engineers: Incorporate low-cost diastolic blood pressure sensing in VR relaxation wearables to provide real-time feedback on user stress levels.$Commercial implications: Enables consumer wearables to offer stress monitoring tailored for VR mental health applications, enhancing user engagement and product differentiation.
Authors
Md Alamin Hossain, M. Rasel Mahmud
Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) relaxation environments are increasingly proposed as accessible tools for stress management, yet the physiological correlates of self-reported stress during VR exposure remain unclear, particularly for blood pressure (BP). We conducted a within-subjects study (N = 18) in which participants viewed relaxing 360-degree videos, grouped into four sound-design categories, such as videos with rhythmic (RHYT), aperiodic (APRD), continuous (CONT), and low-ambient (LOWE) sound through an HTC Vive Focus Vision headset. Systolic (SYS) and diastolic (DIA) BP were recorded after each category using an Omron 3 Series monitor, and self-reported stress was collected via a 0-100 Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) with fixed intervals. While overall BP did not differ significantly across sound categories, self-reported stress did (Friedman chi-square(4) = 12.07, p = .017), with rhythmic sound eliciting significantly lower stress than aperiodic and continuous sound. Critically, DIA, but not SYS, correlated significantly with self-reported stress across conditions (r = .31, p = .003). This suggests that DIA may be a more sensitive physiological indicator of subjective stress than SYS in short VR exposures. We discuss implications for designing and evaluating VR mental health interventions and the value of low-cost physiological sensing alongside self-report.