Title | The heart as judge: Association of heart rate variability with moral judgement-A replication study. | ||
Author | Armbruster, Diana; Strobel, Alexander | ||
Journal | Biol Psychol | Publication Year/Month | 2022-Mar |
PMID | 35122889 | PMCID | -N/A- |
Affiliation + expend | 1.Personality Psychology and Assessment, Institute of Psychology, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany. Electronic address: diana.armbruster@psychologie.tu-chemnitz.de. |
There is growing research into contributing processes and biological correlates of moral inclinations. Recently, a negative association between utilitarianism and resting heart rate variability (HRV) as an indicator of cardiac vagal tone/parasympathetic activity was reported. We aimed to replicate and extend these findings by additionally investigating the sympathetic parameter electro-dermal activity (EDA), but found no associations in the total sample (N = 157). However, when taking sex and the use of combined oral contraceptives (COC) into account, we found a positive association between HRV and estimated deontology in women using COC and men, while in free cycling women there was a negative association. While no direct replication, our results also point to associations between higher HRV and decreased endorsement of harmful actions that serve a greater good. Unlike HRV, EDA showed no associations with moral judgements. In addition, there were correlations between personality traits and moral judgement.