Alignment Between Heart Rate Variability From Fitness Trackers and Perceived Stress: Perspectives From a Large-Scale In Situ Longitudinal Study of Information Workers.

A significant but small relationship between perceived stress and HRV was found. Thus, although HRV is associated with perceived stress in laboratory settings, the strength of that association diminishes in real-life settings. HRV might be more reflective of perceived stress in the presence of specific and isolated stressors and research-grade sensing. Relying on wearable-derived HRV alone might not be sufficient to detect stress in naturalistic settings and should not be considered a proxy for perceived stress but rather a component of a complex phenomenon.