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The connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds
Moving around in crowds is part of our daily lives, and we are used to the associated restriction of mobility. Nevertheless, little is known about how individuals experience these limitations. Such knowledge would, however, help to predict behavior, assess crowding, and improve measures for safety a...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10442413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37604897 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39006-8 |
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author | Beermann, Mira Sieben, Anna |
author_facet | Beermann, Mira Sieben, Anna |
author_sort | Beermann, Mira |
collection | PubMed |
description | Moving around in crowds is part of our daily lives, and we are used to the associated restriction of mobility. Nevertheless, little is known about how individuals experience these limitations. Such knowledge would, however, help to predict behavior, assess crowding, and improve measures for safety and comfort. To address this research gap, we conducted two studies on how constrained mobility affects physiological arousal as measured by mobile electrodermal activity (EDA) sensors. In study 1, we constrained walking speed by externally imposing a specific walking speed without physical proximity to another person, while, in study 2, we varied walking speed by increasing the number of people in a given area. In study 1, we confirmed previous findings showing that faster speeds led to statistically significantly higher levels of physiological arousal. The external limitations of walking speed, however, even if perceived as uncomfortable, did not increase physiological arousal. In the second study, subjects’ speed was gradually reduced by density in a single-lane experiment. This study shows that physiological arousal increased statistically significant with increasing density and decreasing speed, suggesting that people experience more stress when their movement is restricted by proximity to others. The result of study 2 is even more significant given the results of study 1: When there are no other people around, arousal increases with walking speed due to the physiology of walking. This effect reverses when the speed must be reduced due to other people. Then the arousal increases at lower speeds. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10442413 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-104424132023-08-23 The connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds Beermann, Mira Sieben, Anna Sci Rep Article Moving around in crowds is part of our daily lives, and we are used to the associated restriction of mobility. Nevertheless, little is known about how individuals experience these limitations. Such knowledge would, however, help to predict behavior, assess crowding, and improve measures for safety and comfort. To address this research gap, we conducted two studies on how constrained mobility affects physiological arousal as measured by mobile electrodermal activity (EDA) sensors. In study 1, we constrained walking speed by externally imposing a specific walking speed without physical proximity to another person, while, in study 2, we varied walking speed by increasing the number of people in a given area. In study 1, we confirmed previous findings showing that faster speeds led to statistically significantly higher levels of physiological arousal. The external limitations of walking speed, however, even if perceived as uncomfortable, did not increase physiological arousal. In the second study, subjects’ speed was gradually reduced by density in a single-lane experiment. This study shows that physiological arousal increased statistically significant with increasing density and decreasing speed, suggesting that people experience more stress when their movement is restricted by proximity to others. The result of study 2 is even more significant given the results of study 1: When there are no other people around, arousal increases with walking speed due to the physiology of walking. This effect reverses when the speed must be reduced due to other people. Then the arousal increases at lower speeds. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-08-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10442413/ /pubmed/37604897 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39006-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Beermann, Mira Sieben, Anna The connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds |
title | The connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds |
title_full | The connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds |
title_fullStr | The connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds |
title_full_unstemmed | The connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds |
title_short | The connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds |
title_sort | connection between stress, density, and speed in crowds |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10442413/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37604897 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39006-8 |
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