Abstract
Cardiac vagal tone (indexed via resting heart rate variability [HRV]) has been previously associated with superior executive functioning. Is HRV related to wiser reasoning and less biased judgments? Here we hypothesize that this will be the case when adopting a self-distanced (as opposed to a self-immersed) perspective, with self-distancing enabling individuals with higher HRV to overcome bias-promoting egocentric impulses and to reason wisely. However, higher HRV may not be associated with greater wisdom when adopting a self-immersed perspective. Participants were randomly assigned to reflect on societal issues from a self-distanced- or self-immersed perspective, with responses coded for reasoning quality. In a separate task, participants read about and evaluated a person performing morally ambiguous actions, with responses coded for dispositional vs. situational attributions. We simultaneously assessed resting cardiac recordings, obtaining six HRV indicators. As hypothesized, in the self-distanced condition, each HRV indicator was positively related to prevalence of wisdom-related reasoning (e.g., prevalence of recognition of limits of one’s knowledge, recognition that the world is in flux/change, consideration of others’ opinions and search for an integration of these opinions) and to balanced vs. biased attributions (recognition of situational and dispositional factors vs. focus on dispositional factors alone). In contrast, there was no relationship between these variables in the self-immersed condition. We discuss implications for research on psychophysiology, cognition, and wisdom.
Highlights
Though wisdom can be viewed in different ways (Staudinger and Glück, 2011), many social scientists view it through a cognitive lens, as an unbiased judgment informed by knowledge of the social world (Assmann, 1994; Baltes and Staudinger, 2000; Baltes and Smith, 2008; Grossmann et al, 2010)
Research indicates that cueing people to reflect on social experiences from a self-distanced perspective leads them to focus less on egocentric recounting of their experiences and more on reconstruing the experience in egodecentered ways that facilitate insight and reconciliation of disagreements, helping them to work through social dilemma they encounter in their lives (Kross et al, 2005; Gruber et al, 2009). Based on these findings and past theory (Thayer and Lane, 2000; Thayer et al, 2012), we propose that the key factor distinguishing conditions under which higher heart rate variability (HRV) would be linked to a wiser judgment concerns the role of egocentrism and its attenuation through a self-distanced perspective
We propose that high HRV people will be abler than low HRV people to reflect on a social issue in a wise fashion when they are cued to selfdistance
Summary
Though wisdom can be viewed in different ways (Staudinger and Glück, 2011), many social scientists view it through a cognitive lens, as an unbiased judgment informed by knowledge of the social world (Assmann, 1994; Baltes and Staudinger, 2000; Baltes and Smith, 2008; Grossmann et al, 2010). Behavioral neuroscientists have suggested that wisdom involves the heart, or visceral functions (Cannon, 1932; Damasio, 1994; Meeks and Jeste, 2009). Cardiac vagal tone, indexed via heart rate variability (HRV), is one prominent marker of such visceral functioning. It has been linked to higher executive functions (Thayer et al, 2009) and emotion-regulation (e.g., Fabes and Eisenberg, 1997). A Heart and A Mind examining whether and how HRV functioning is related to indices of a wisdom-related judgment. Drawing on the prior literature, we propose that the link between HRV and wisdomrelated judgment may not be straightforward. We propose that higher-HRV individuals may exhibit wiser judgment when they are encouraged to transcend their egocentric impulses via self-distancing instructions
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