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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Wisdom is a matter of both heart and mind, research finds ScienceDaily... Researchers have found that people with more varied heart rates were able to reason in a wiser, less biased fashion about societal problems when they were instructed to reflect on a social issue from a third-person perspective. The fluctuations of your heartbeat may affect your wisdom, according to new research from the University of Waterloo. The study suggests that heart rate variation and thinking process work together to enable wise reasoning about complex social issues. The work by Igor Grossmann, professor of psychology at Waterloo, and colleagues based at the Australian Catholic University, appears in the online journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. Their study breaks new ground in wisdom research by identifying conditions under which psychophysiology impacts wise judgment. "Our research shows that wise reasoning is not exclusively a function of the mind and cognitive ability," says Prof. Grossmann. "We found that people who have greater heart rate variability and who are able to think about social problems from a distanced viewpoint demonstrate a greater capacity for wise reasoning." The study extends previous work on cognitive underpinnings of wise judgment to include consideration how the heart's functioning impacts the mind. A growing consensus among philosophers and cognitive scientists defines wise judgment to include the ability to recognize the limits of one's knowledge, to be aware of the varied contexts of life and how they may unfold over time, to acknowledge others' points of view, and to seek reconciliation of opposing viewpoints. The new study is the first to show that the physiology of the heart, specifically the variability of heart rate during low physical activity, is related to less biased, wiser judgment. Human heart rate tends to fluctuate, even during steady-state conditions, such as while a person is sitting. Heart rate variability refers to the variation in the time interval between heartbeats and is related to the nervous system's control of organ functions. The researchers found that people with more varied heart rates were able to reason in a wiser, less biased fashion about societal problems when they were instructed to reflect on a social issue from a third-person perspective. But, when the study's participants were instructed to reason about the issue from a first-person perspective, no relationship between heart rate and wiser judgment emerged. "We already knew that people with greater variation in their heart rate show superior performance in the brain's executive functioning such as working memory," says Prof. Grossmann. "However, that does not necessarily mean these people are wiser -- in fact, some people may use their cognitive skills to make unwise decisions. To channel their cognitive abilities for wiser judgment, people with greater heart rate variability first need to overcome their egocentric viewpoints." The study opens the door for further exploration of wise judgment at the intersection of physiological and cognitive research. Journal Reference: Joseph Ciarrochi et al. A Heart and A Mind: Self-distancing Facilitates the Association Between Heart Rate Variability, and Wise Reasoning. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, April 2016 DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00068 University of Waterloo. "Wisdom is a matter of both heart and mind, research finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 April 2016. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160407221449.htm Poster Comment: By this theory I should be OK wisdom-wise; Heart rate varies up to 160 BPM after onset of SV Tachycardia to a low of 24 in the case of a medication/remediation error, but normally 60, dropping to below 50 after taking beta blocker to recover from SVT. Scary how one 5 mg pill keeps rate in high 40's low 50's for actually a few days. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
I hear my niece in Chicago pulled straight A's in neuroscience. That is amazing. And when you think about it, I was a dumb truck driver most of my life. But, you have to be pretty smart to pull that load behind you. I saw a lot of bad wrecks over the years. It was a hard and lonely life. ;) "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke
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