Abstract
Phylogenetic and neurobiological theories suggest that inter-individual differences in high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) are associated with inter-individual differences in social behavior and social cognition. To test these theories, we investigated whether individuals with high and low HF-HRV would show different preferences for cooperative behavior in social contexts. We recorded resting state HF-HRV in 84 healthy individuals before they completed the Social Value Orientation task, a well-established measure of cooperative preferences. HF-HRV was derived from short-term (300 s) and ultra-short-term (60 s, 120 s) recordings of participants’ heart rate to determine the robustness of possible findings. Irrespective of recording length, we found a sex-dependent association between inter-individual differences in HF-HRV and inter-individual differences in social value orientation: The preference for cooperation was more pronounced among individuals with high as compared low HF-HRV, albeit only in male and not in female participants. These findings suggest that males with high HF-HRV are more inclined to engage in cooperative behavior than males with low HF-HRV.
Highlights
Across industrialized and non-industrialized societies, humans show a remarkable and distinct suite of cooperative behavior[1,2,3,4]
An individual’s social behavior is orchestrated by a network of prefrontal and para-limbic brain regions that are relevant for a plethora of social processes[23], implying that functional and structural changes in these brain regions are associated with changes in social cognition and social interaction
A series of further one-way analyses of variances (ANOVAs) revealed no differences in high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) between male and female participants, regardless whether HF-HRV was derived from short-term or ultra-short-term recordings of participants’ HR [F ≤ 0.528, p ≥ 0.470, ηp2 ≤ 0.004; see Table 1]
Summary
Across industrialized and non-industrialized societies, humans show a remarkable and distinct suite of cooperative behavior[1,2,3,4]. Individuals may, have a preference for cooperation, independent of considerations regarding the expectancy, reinforcement or reward of cooperation, which is driving their behavior during social interactions[12]. Using short-term and ultra-short-term measures of vmHRV allowed us to investigate whether the association between inter-individual differences in vmHRV and inter-individual differences in cooperative preferences would be invariant across recording conditions. Inter-individual differences in cooperative preferences were determined with the Social Value Orientation task [SVO]36, an established resource allocation task that differentiates between cooperative and non-cooperative allocations on basis of participants’ choices over a continuum of self/other payoff allocations (see Fig. 1). We expected that inter-individual differences in cooperative preferences would be mediated by participants’ sex because male and female participants perform differently on resource allocation tasks that measure inter-individual differences in cooperation[37,38]
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