New mDOT Center Research Reveals How Often We Really Experience Stress: 5.39 Times a Day

How many stressors does the average person encounter in a single day? While we all feel the weight of daily “hassles,” pinpointing an exact frequency has long been a challenge for researchers due to the limitations of traditional memory-based surveys.

A new study supported by the mDOT Center and published in the UbiComp Companion ’25, titled “How Many Times Do People Usually Experience Different Kinds of Stressors Each Day?“, provides a groundbreaking answer. By utilizing wearable technology and advanced mathematical modeling, researchers from the University of Memphis and Pennsylvania State University found that people experience an average of 5.39 stressors per day.

Beyond Recall:  Using Wearables to Capture Real-Time Stress

Traditional methods like end-of-day interviews or diary entries often suffer from recall bias, where participants forget transient stressors that occurred hours earlier. To solve this, the research team utilized the MOODS dataset, which collected 100 days of data from 68 participants wearing smartwatches.

Instead of waiting until the end of the day, the system used AI-triggered prompts. When the wearable detected physiological signals associated with stress, it prompted the user in real-time to record the specific stressor in a freeform format. This ensured that stressors were captured as soon as they occurred.

The Hidden Landscape of Daily Stress
The study developed asymptotic models to estimate the “latent frequency” of stress—essentially calculating the true number of stressors a person likely experiences if they were prompted every single time a stressful event occurred.

The findings summarize the most common sources of daily tension:

• Work-related stressors are the most frequent, occurring 1.76 times per day (or about 12 times a week).
• Health, fatigue, or pain follows at 0.59 times per day.
• Transportation (commuting) ranks third at 0.55 times per day.

Interestingly, the model revealed patterns that sparse data might miss. For example, while transportation stressors have traditionally been reported more frequently in raw data because they are brief and easy to identify, health-related stressors actually have a higher latent frequency because they can persist throughout the day.

Why These Numbers Matter for Mental Health

Daily stressors impact health and health outcomes across numerous dimensions like sleep, cardiovascular health, healthy interpersonal dynamics, and others.  Establishing these normative baselines is a major step forward for clinical care. Just as a doctor can easily reference what a “normal” blood pressure reading looks like, mental health practitioners can now use these benchmarks to identify at-risk individuals.

For instance, if a patient reports 20 work-related stressors in a week, a clinician can immediately recognize that this significantly exceeds the population norm of 12, signaling a need for intervention or support. Furthermore, this data helps in the design of Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs), allowing mobile health apps to deliver support at the most effective moments without overwhelming the user with “prompt fatigue” or waiting until the most opportune time to help has already passed.

By turning observational data from wearables into clinically actionable insights, this research helps bridge the gap between ubiquitous sensing and personalized mental health support.