Spontaneous Breathing Rate Variations Linked to Social Exclusion and Emotion Self-assessment

Abstract

The emotional reactions to social exclusion can be associated with physiological responses that could allow researchers to estimate the valence and intensity of the ongoing affective state. In this work, respiratory activity was analysed to verify whether breathing rate variations can be considered as predictive factors of subsequent positive and negative affect after inclusion and exclusion in young women. A standard Cyberball task was implemented and manipulated information was provided to the participants to create both conditions. The participants were socially excluded by limiting their participation to 6% of the total number of passes among three teammates and providing negative feedback about them. The results suggest that breathing rate can be a good option to infer subjective feelings during social interactions and a promising feature to incorporate into modern emotion monitoring systems as an alternative to other physiological measures. Furthermore, the interaction between metaemotion and physiology was studied by recording breathing rate while completing the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, evidencing a breathing rate increase during the emotion self-assessment only after exclusion.

Physiological Responses to Organizational Stressors Among Police Managers

“…Experimental research supports a purported mechanism by which organizational stress would be associated with physiological reactivity among police managers. Researchers demonstrate a link between negative social interactions and social exclusion to increases in cardiovascular metrics such as heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) (Hidalgo-Muñoz et al, 2022;Liddell & Courtney, 2018). For example, Chen and Drummond (2008) showed that individuals show significant increases in HR, skin conductance and respiration during social evaluative tasks (i.e., singing in front of strangers, listening to audiotapes of themselves), regardless of whether they had a fear of social evaluation.…”