Abstract
Flexible adaptation to constantly changing environments is linked to mental health and psychological functioning. Heart rate variability (HRV), an index of autonomic flexibility, has been implicated in emotional flexibility, the ability to generate contextually dependent emotional responses in accordance with situational demands. The current study investigated whether HRV during rest is associated with experienced emotion, one of the measures of emotional flexibility. To assess experienced emotion in response to changing events, three types of stimuli sets were created by presenting two stimuli successively. First, two stimuli represented the same valence (i.e., negative/negative or positive/positive). Second, two stimuli represented opposite valences (i.e., negative/positive or positive/negative). Third, a neutral stimulus was followed by negative or positive stimulus (i.e., neutral/negative or neutral/positive). Psychological ratings for experienced emotion to the second stimulus were collected with regard to valence and arousal. The results showed that subjects with lower resting HRV experienced more aroused states in response to successive positive stimuli. Resting HRV may be a proxy of emotional flexibility indexed by subjective arousal states to positive events.
Highlights
Life involves constantly changing events in the external environment
We investigated whether resting Heart rate variability (HRV) is associated with experienced emotion elicited by multiple emotional events
This is the first evidence indicating an association between resting HRV and subjective experienced emotion by measuring psychological ratings
Summary
Life involves constantly changing events in the external environment. Rapid and adequate adaptation to these changes is vital for organisms to survive. Individuals with greater emotional flexibility have positive reactivity to positive events and negative reactivity to negative events, in accordance with situational demands. These context-dependent emotional responses are characterized by flexible autonomic, somatic, and psychological responses to changing events. Heart rate variability (HRV), an index of autonomic flexibility, is positively associated with good psychological and physiological functioning (Thayer & Lane, 2000). Low HRV is associated with a number of psychological disorders characterized by poor emotion regulation and behavioral inflexibility (see Thayer & Brosschot, 2005 for a review). Given that emotional flexibility can be defined by autonomic and behavioral reactivity, it is possible that HRV assesses an individual’s emotional flexibility, or how well an individual responds to emo-
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