PSYCHOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO SENSORY STIMULATION BY ENVIRONMENTAL STRESSORS - TRAIT OR STATE

In order to separate trait- and state-characteristics of psychological response to sensory perceived environmental stressors, the present combined field/laboratory study was performed. Based on the annoyance concept (Koelega, 1987), the first step consisted of a questionnaire-based survey covering 2300 Dusseldorf citizens living in areas of either predominant traffic noise or industrial odour exposure. From this basic sample 150 nonsmoking subjects were preselected on the basis of either high or low degrees of environmental annoyance induced by traffic noise or industrial odours, respectively, A total of 119 of these preclassified subjects were experimentally exposed in the laboratory to different physico-chemical stressors as follows: (1) To traffic noise (0, 65, 75dB(A) as L(eq)); (2) to an odorous compound (0, 50, 150ppm H2S); and (3) to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS as 0, 5, 10ppm delta-CO). Each subject was exposed in a social setting to only one level of each experimental condition; exposure duration was one hour. Apart from a number of physiological endpoints (e.g. eye blinks, lacrimation, COHb, heart rate, breathing), several measures of perceived discomfort (annoyance), were taken during exposure. It was found that, in terms of explained variance, both exposure (30%) and preselection (10%) had a significant impact on perceived discomfort (annoyance), which generalised across stressors. It is concluded that environmental annoyance induced by sensory stimulation exhibits both state- and trait-characteristics.