Determining the effect of gender and racial differences on mental and physical tasks

Abstract

Occupational stress has attracted the attention of many researchers during recent years. Through studies of stress the level of efficiency of work performance can be increased while the level of human error can be decreased. Investigating stress without considering human factors such as gender and race cannot be effective and reliable. Many studies investigate these factors but findings show conflicts among investigation results. The aim of this research is resulted by gender and racial differences to investigate the effects on performance of mental and physical tasks. A total of 120 (non-smoking) participants consisted of 60 males and 60 female of different races such as Malay, Chinese, Iranian and Black-African. Two tasks were considered in the experiment: ?) Mental, ??) Physical. The experiment consisted of three stages. The first and second stage were held in a non-stressful situation in a library and the third stage was held in a stressful-situation in a mechanical engineering workshop. Considering energy expenditure per tasks were accomplished consecutively in each stage. Heart rate was measured once before and once during each task, each measurement taking approximately thirty seconds. Mean heart rate numbers during thirty second periods were recorded for the analysis of baseline (non-stress) and stress situations. To measure heart rate, “Oxi-meter finger pulse” was applied. To measure nicotine rate in order to determine non-smoking subjects, “Smokerlyzer” was used. A questionnaire was administered to a random group of students before stages in order to determine an appropriate reward for the winner of each skill competition in third stage. The analysis heart rate reactivity, recall task efficiency and typing task efficiency were accomplished through SPSS 18. Mean heart rate in baseline and stress per subject was calculated. Correlation and regression were SPSS methods to analyze (P value < 0.05). Gender differences clearly influenced heart rate reactivity, and mental task in baseline and stressful situation. Results demonstrated that stress decreased mental efficiency in females more than males, also that males adapted faster than females in stressful situations.