Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 85, Issue 3, December 2010, Pages 432-436
Biological Psychology

Upward spirals of the heart: Autonomic flexibility, as indexed by vagal tone, reciprocally and prospectively predicts positive emotions and social connectedness

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.09.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Vagal tone (VT), an index of autonomic flexibility, is linked to social and psychological well-being. We posit that the association between VT and well-being reflects an “upward spiral” in which autonomic flexibility, represented by VT, facilitates capitalizing on social and emotional opportunities and the resulting opportunistic gains, in turn, lead to higher VT. Community-dwelling adults were asked to monitor and report their positive emotions and the degree to which they felt socially connected each day for 9 weeks. VT was measured at the beginning and end of the 9-week period. Adults who possessed higher initial levels of VT increased in connectedness and positive emotions more rapidly than others. Furthermore, increases in connectedness and positive emotions predicted increases in VT, independent of initial VT level. This evidence is consistent with an “upward spiral” relationship of reciprocal causality, in which VT and psychosocial well-being reciprocally and prospectively predict one another.

Research highlights

▶ Vagal tone predicts gains in connectedness and positive emotions. ▶ Gains in connectedness and positive emotions predict increases in vagal tone. ▶ Suggests an “upward spiral” of reciprocal causality between vagal tone and psychosocial well-being.

Section snippets

Method

Seventy-three adult participants (90.4% white, 40% male, mean age = 37.3, range 21–68) were recruited from the university community through fliers and email invitation. After giving consent, participants provided a 2-min3

Results

Preliminary analyses. The data were first analyzed by computing the per-week mean, standard deviation and number of reports for social connectedness, positive emotions and negative emotions. As shown in Table 1, participants began the study slightly above the scale midpoint on self-rated social connectedness and slightly below the scale midpoint on positive and negative emotions, indicating a minimal likelihood of ceiling effects in the subsequent analyses. We also examined change in the

Discussion

We hypothesized and found that autonomic flexibility, as indexed by vagal tone, predicts gains in positive emotions and social connectedness, which in turn result in greater autonomic flexibility. Specifically, we found that, when given the opportunity to reflect on their experiences each day, adults who possessed higher levels of VT increased in social connectedness and positive emotions more rapidly than others. Furthermore, we found that degree of change in social connectedness and positive

Acknowledgements

This research was funded with the support of National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH59615 to the second author. Portions of this manuscript were presented as part of the first author's master's thesis, and have been presented at scientific conferences, including Association for Psychological Science and Society of Personality and Social Psychology. We thank Jolynn Pek for statistical guidance and comments on earlier drafts. We also thank James Long for consultation regarding

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