Is your phone so smart to affect your state? An exploratory study based on psychophysiological measures

Traditional stress management techniques require significant professional training and expertise to administer as well as people, time, and resources, which can be difficult to achieve. Thanks to the recent progress and diffusion of mobile electronic devices, it is possible today to set up and test an effective self-help stress management program outside a clinical setting. Although the efficacy of mobile self-help approaches have been tested through several studies, and promising applications can be developed, as yet no study has tested the feasibility of mobile platforms to actually elicit core affective states. In this study we used an advanced approach to assess the efficacy of these mobile platforms by recording and processing many psychophysiological measures, which extend the capabilities of the standard self-report questionnaires, objectifying the subjective. Our results seem to show the efficacy of inducing positive and negative affective states, using smart phones. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.