The way people type and use the computer mouse may be a better predictor of stress than their heart rate, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday, believing their model could help prevent chronic stress.
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“The way we type on our keyboard and move our mouse seems to be a better predictor of our stress level than our heart rate in an office work environment,” said mathematician and study author Mara Nagelin.
For this study, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) observed 90 participants in a lab performing realistic office tasks, such as scheduling appointments or recording and analyzing data.
They recorded the participants’ mouse and keyboard behavior as well as their heart rate, and regularly asked the participants how stressed they felt.
While some participants were allowed to work undisturbed, half of the group were repeatedly interrupted by chat messages and were also asked to participate in a job interview.
Researchers have established that stressed people type and move their mouse differently than relaxed people.
“Stressed people move the mouse more often and less precisely and cover longer distances on the screen,” said Nagelin.
The researchers also found that people who feel stressed at the office make more errors when typing and tend to write in spurts, with many brief pauses.
Relaxed people, on the other hand, take fewer but longer breaks when writing on their computers, they found.
The link between stress and keyboard and mouse behavior can be explained by the so-called neuromotor noise theory.
“Increasing stress levels negatively impact our brain’s ability to process information. It also affects our motor skills,” explained psychologist and co-author Jasmine Kerr.
The researchers felt that there was an urgent need to find reliable ways to detect increased stress, pointing out that one in three employees in Switzerland suffers from stress at work.
“Those affected often do not realize that their physical and mental resources are diminishing until it is too late,” it was said.
They are currently testing their model using an app, with data recorded from Swiss employees who have agreed to have mouse and keyboard usage, as well as their heart rates, recorded while they work.
The results are expected by the end of the year.
“We want to help workers quickly identify stress, not create a monitoring tool for companies,” assured the authors of the study.