Perceived Recreative Experience and the Relief of Tension
Lloyd A. Heywood · Journal of Leisure Research · 1978
Tension relief has been described as one of the primary functions of recreative experience. In this study, physiological stress, reflected in increased heart rate, forehead and upper back tension, and respiration rate, decreased skin resistance, and depth of respiration, was induced in 60 subjects. Attempts were then made to relieve the stress through exposure to one of six different potentially recreative experiences. The findings support the contention that stress is relieved to a greater extent by perceived experiences than by other kinds of experience.