Effects of Auditory Stimuli on Blood Pressure, Respiration Rate, and Heart Rate Changes While Watching a Suspenseful Video

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of auditory and visual stimuli on subjects’ physiological response. The auditory stimuli included white noise, calming music, and music anticipated to induce stress, which were divided among three groups. The physiological response was measured by the following parameters: diastolic and systolic blood pressure, respiration rate, and heart rate. These values were compared to baselines taken while participants received no auditory stimuli and values taken while participants listened to unique stimuli based on their group assignment. We hypothesized that calming music would result in similar values to those taken as baselines while watching the horror movie scene, while the scary music would result in elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rate compared to the control. Our results displayed a reduction in heart rate with calming music and an increase in heart rate with stressful music alone, however the results were not significant enough to conclude a definitive relationship between the auditory stimuli and heart rate. Values for blood pressure and heartbeats per minute were also not significant enough to support our hypothesis.