Keyboard, Mouse May Indicate How Stressed You Are at Work

Are you tired from work? Your keyboard and mouse could tell you how stressed you are from work.

Swiss researchers from ETH Zurich have developed a model to detect work-related stress by analyzing how people type and use their mice.

Detecting Work Stress

One in three workers in Switzerland experience work stress, and many do not realize that their physical and mental resources are being exhausted until it is too late, according to a study conducted by the research team.

Hence, it is crucial to recognize work-related stress at an early stage. Using new data and machine learning, the researchers created a model that can estimate someone's stress level only by observing their typing and mouse behavior.

The team established that stressed individuals move their mouse pointer more frequently, less precisely, and across wider swaths of the screen.

On the other hand, relaxed people move more slowly and choose shorter, more direct routes to their destinations. Additionally, those who experience stress at work tend to make more mistakes when typing.

People experiencing stress tend to write intermittently and discontinuously with frequent short pauses, while relaxed people take fewer but longer breaks when typing on a keyboard.

According to the researchers, the link between stress and how people type and use a mouse can be clarified with the neuromotor noise theory, which proposes that heightened stress levels hinder the brain's ability to process information and, as a result, affect motor skills.

Lab Experiments

The ETH researchers observed 90 study participants in the lab who performed office tasks similar to real-life ones, such as scheduling appointments or analyzing data, to build their stress model.

They monitored the participants' keyboard and mouse activities and heart rates during the experiment.

The researchers also inquired about the participants' stress levels at various intervals. While some participants could work uninterrupted, others had to participate in a job interview.

Among the latter group, half of the participants were constantly disrupted by chat messages. Unlike previous studies conducted by other researchers, where the control group was usually not assigned any tasks and could relax, all participants in the ETH researchers' experiment were required to carry out office tasks.

The researchers are currently testing their model using information from Swiss workers who consent to have their pulse rate, mouse and Keyboard activity, and other workplace-specific data captured using an app.

The same software also routinely inquires about the employees' perceived stress levels. However, the researchers agree that detecting workplace stress brings up some challenging problems.

Hence, employees and ethicists are collaborating to ensure the app complies with ethical standards and appropriately manages sensitive data.

The study's findings were published in the Journal of Biomedical Information.