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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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The brain has long enjoyed a privileged status as psychology’s favorite body organ. This is, of course, unsurprising given that the brain instantiates virtually all mental operations, from understanding language, to learning that fire is dangerous, to recalling the name of one’s kindergarten teacher, to categorizing fruits and vegetables, to predicting the future. Arguing for the importance of the brain in psychology is like arguing for the importance of money in economics.
More surprising, however, is the role of the entire body in psychology and the capacity for body parts inside and out to influence and regulate the most intimate operations of emotional and social life. The stomach’s gastric activity , for example, corresponds to how intensely people experience feelings such as happiness and disgust. The hands’ manipulation of objects that vary in temperature and texture influences judgments of how “warm” or “rough” people are. And the ovaries and testes’ production of progesterone and testosterone shapes behavior ranging from financial risk-taking to shopping preferences.
Psychology’s recognition of the body’s influence on the mind coincides with a recent focus on the role of the heart in our social psychology. It turns out that the heart is not only critical for survival, but also for how people related to one another. In particular, heart rate variability (HRV), variation in the heart’s beat-to-beat interval, plays a key role in social behaviors ranging from decision-making, regulating one’s emotions, coping with stress, and even academic engagement. Decreased HRV appears to be related to depression and autism and may be linked to thinking about information deliberately. Increased HRV, on the other hand, is associated with greater social skills such as recognizing other people’s emotions and helps people cope with socially stressful situations, such as thinking about giving a public speech or being evaluated by someone of another race. This diverse array of findings reflects a burgeoning interest across clinical psychology, neuroscience, social psychology, and developmental psychology in studying the role of the heart in social life.
A key moment for the field came in 1995, when Stephen Porges, currently a professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago, put forth Polyvagal Theory, a theory that emphasized the role of the heart in social behavior. The theory states that the vagus nerve, a nerve likely found only in mammals, provides input to the heart to guide behavior as complex as forming relationships with other people as well as disengaging from others. A distinguishing feature of Polyvagal theory is that it places importance not on heart rate per se, but rather on the variability of the heart rate, previously thought to be an uninteresting variable or mere noise.
Since 1995, a broad spectrum of research emerged in support of Polyvagal theory and has demonstrated the importance of the heart in social functioning. In 2001, Porges and his colleagues monitored infants when they engaged in a social interaction with the experimenter (cooing, talking, and smiling at them) and when they encountered the experimenter simply making a still face—a frozen expression—toward them. Infants’ HRV not only increased during the social interaction, but also increases in HRV predicted positive engagement (greater attention and active participation by the infants) during this interaction. In adults as well, HRV appears to be associated with success in regulating one’s emotions during social interaction, extraversion, and general positive mood.
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11 Comments
Add CommentMaybe I'm mistaken, but I got the impression reading this very interesting article that heart rate variability was being perceived as an important indicator of brain processes. If that is the principal consideration of this variable, it should be remembered that the rate of blood flow has an enormous influence over nearly all brain processing...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe heart may play a role in our emotional lives, but it requires stressing that primary sensory input is to the brain first. The nucleus for the vagus nerve lies in the brain stem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA feed back loop may operate, but this is not unusual.
Yeah... I think this is borderline bogus research. As a poster already mentioned. the main driver of HRV is NOT the heart.. it is merely the receptor of multiple inputs... sympathetic.. parasympathetic (Vagal)... hormonal, esp. adrenal catecholamines.. baroreceptors... etc. Cardiac function RESPONDS to these many stimuli... also modulated by body temperature, hydration status, hemoglobin levels... the basic physiologic milleu.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuffice it to say that there are obviously far more fundamental determinants of social adaptation, coping skills, achievement... genetics, parenting, psychological conditions, etc.... that make this research appear... frankly, absurd.
POLYVAGAL?... more like "POLY-VAGUE"!
I agree that the brain is the primary 'driver' of HRV, but is is a feedback system: HRV may have enormous influence over brain functions. Certainly blood flow variability within the brain is being used as a primary indicator of specific brain activity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do not agree with the idea that all roads end up in the Brain. It is only part of a complex mechanism called body, which requires an environment to function properly. Environment feeds our sensory organs, which process information with the help of various biochemical systems (or chakras if you prefer) inside the body according to the content of the information and the sensitivity of the person to the relevant content and produce a respond to the environment that responds back until death.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, stands to reason that autonomously functioning organs should not only send signals to the brain - I mean, coordinating that kind of thing is what the brain was invented for in the first place - but also that the organism as a whole (what we're all about, after all) should develop extra and more sophisticated behaviours using the processing power now in place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike the tongue, the other oral organs, and speech.
I think that's known as dialectics in post-Kantian, holistic and evolutionary thought.
Yes, we owe our life span on earth to our 'ticker', and our physiology and psychology are working nicely in tandem, or so it should be, at least, depending, of course, on the blood flow oxygenating our brain, thanks to the blood - pumping muscle which is at the 'heart' of our happiness & well -being.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWalking, alone,or with a friend - or even talking on the phone for at least twenty minutes, revs up the circulation beautifully and makes me get into a very pleasant, almost euphoric, good-mood state! (Must have something to do with our evolutionary conditioning, I suspect.)
Interestingly, it also makes evolutionary sense that our nutritional lifestyle should be linked up with the 'pursuit of happiness' - German researchers at Stuttgart University found out that our brain's pleasure centre gets aroused whenever we eat crunchy food for about 15 minutes, since this oxygenates our brain cells.This sensation originally must have derived from our crunchy, raw plant food regime. Maybe our craving for deep-fries is understandable as yet another ersatz satisfaction? And to hell with the consequences: the clogging up of our heart arteries ! ( For an evolutionary perspective on our quaint nutritional habits, please visit Youthevity.com)
well gosh. if your going to study psychology, you have to study systems. it's the language. you have to know not only what feedback is, but what a GOVERNOR is. thru the vagus nerve, in this case they say, the heart and brain form a system. not just a feedback system or a message system, but a Governing System. the two in this system are REGULATING the system as they regulate one another.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisas for importance, the mood doesn't govern the HRV but Vice-Versa. it is said the Subject can more or less govern the HRV Mentally but as SonnyStrobe says, always with an external resource. the heart feeds of the brain but is independant of the external. i'm saying it's spontaneous. no matter what we may think up, it is the heat that determines the cnsequences. Even in the Mind governing it is the change in the HRV which makes the difference in the system.
not very erudite , but you get the picture.
The ancient Indian Science related yoga and Ayurveda consider that the region of the heart is the seat of nerves` center dealing with emotionality and relationships. It is called the Anahata Chakra and its vibrations can be controlled by specialised breathing techniques,as well as with some herbal medicine,so that the person can get over his blues or feelings of hate. There are reports of certain medicinal plants like ARJUN having direct heart rate frequency modulation effect,as per sanskrit literature related to Ayurveda
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSURESHKUMAR.S,SCIENTIST,ADVISER,NIIST[CSIR]INDIA
amazing what has been found previous to "the scientific method"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting stuff. They need to test whether or not the vagal nerve is the trigger or if the brain is the trigger to the vagal nerve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also despise calling a hypothesis a "theory". It is clearly the Polyvagal Hypothesis. Every new idea is suddenly a "theory" when it hits the media.