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Our motivation for this lab was trying to figure out what factors influence heart rate. We chose to test factors that we knew had a phyical or emotional affect.

To try to control our heart rate we tried many different things. These included talking about things that stress us, listening to beautiful and angry music, singing, laying down.

Marie's resting heart rate was 70.19. When she talked about what stressed her this increased her heart rate to 83.01. When she listened to beautiful music her heart rate decreased to 70 and when she listened to "angry" music it went up to 76.9. When she laid down it decreased again to 65 and when she sang it increased to 89.

Jen's resting heart rate was 88.06. When she talked about what stressed her out her heart rate increased to 238.25, but this measure was obviously flawed. When she listened to the beautiful music her heart rate decreased to 72 and when she listened to "angry" music it increased to 82. When she sang her heart rate increased to 90.

In conclusion, you can't predict or control what your heart rate is going to do. We did come up with some theories about the mechanism that controls heart rate. We believe that this mechanism is influenced by emotion (as evidenced by the music listening, singing and stress). Body position did not seem to influence heart rate as much, but it definitely had some influence.

It will be interesting to compare our findings with those of the other groups.