Evaluation of Stress Reduction Effects Using Physiological Indexes in Manga Reading

In recent years, the increasing stress within society has emerged as an issue, with many individuals reporting stress in their work and professional lives. Prolonged stress can lead to mental health disorder such as depression. This situation highlights the importance of finding ways to reduce stress. Among various options to reduce stress, manga has the advantage of its convenience and ease of reading anywhere, making it a beneficial option to reduce stress. The effects of manga on individuals include relaxation and cognitive transformation, as well as being effective in the care of psychosis. Although these effects have been investigated through descriptive questionnaires, research on the effects of manga in alleviating individuals’ stress during the reading process remains lacking. On the other hand, it has been suggested that physiological indexes can be used to detect the stress of individuals by frequency analysis of heartbeat intervals. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of reading manga on the reduction of stress felt by individuals by using physiological indexes. As a preliminary experiment to achieve this objective, we investigated the effect of reading manga on stress reduction using two manga. The results showed that LF/HF, a heart rate variability index, was reduced after reading manga than after resting after the stress-loading task, indicating that reading manga reduced stress.