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Exploring the role of the heart during an
intuitive decision making task Eva Lobach and
Dick BiermanUniversity of Amsterdam and
University for Humanistics, Utrecht

• Introduction
• The somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1994)
  suggests that physiological changes in response
  to alternative choices provide useful, perhaps
  indispensible, input during an intuitive decision
  making process.
• We expect that
• physiological changes during stimulus
  presentation predict choices
• people with a more acute sense of their own
  physiological changes (detectors) perform better
  on intuitive decision making tasks than
  non-detectors.
• We compared performance of detectors and
  non-detectors on two measures of intuition
• intuition questionnaire (Taggart Valenzi,
  1981)
• implicit grammar task. (Cleeremans et al., 1998
  )

Results More men (55) than women (20) were
heartbeat detectors (exact p .01,
two-sided). Detectors did not differ from
non-detectors on the three intuition scales of
the intuition questionnaire, but scored
non-significantly higher on all three ratio
scales. There was no significant learning on the
grammar task, and detectors and non-detectors did
not differ on total grammar scores. A 2 (type
of word) 2 (hit or miss) 2 (first or second
interbeat interval) repeated measures ANOVA
showed a significant 3-way interaction (F(1,61)
3.98, p.05), due to a change in heartrate from
first to second heartbeat interval while
participants viewed the word they would choose
later, regardless of whether that was the correct
word or not. (Fig 2)

• Conclusions
• Physiological changes such as changes in
  heartrate while looking at a stimulus, appear
  to be related to future choices, as the somatic
  marker hypothesis suggests.
• Detectors (people with a more acute sense of
  their own physiological processes) do not perform
  better on tasks that involve intuitive decision
  making.
• Exploratory analyses suggests that detectors may
  be more rational than non-detectors, suggesting a
  link between anxiety control and sensitivity to
  physiological changes.
• Caveats
• The grammar task that was designed to trigger
  implicit learning failed overall to produce
  learning in our participants. We could therefore
  not test whether the heartrate changes prior to
  choice would still occur when learning had taken
  place.
• If learning had taken place more generally, we
  might have seen a performance difference between
  detectors and non-detectors. However, the results
  of the intuition questionnaire make this less
  likely.
• In previous studies, performance of heartbeat
  detectors in implicit learning tasks showed mixed
  results in some they performed better, in others
  there was no difference. (Katkin, Wiens, and
  Öhman, 2001, Wiens, Katkin, and Öhman, 2003).
  These mixed results may be a clue that heartbeat
  detectors are a mixed bunch as well. Their
  enhanced sensitivity may produce fear in some and
  an enhanced intuition in others.
• Next
• At present we investigate whether a ten-day
  meditation retreat affects heartbeat detection
  and performance on implicit learning. We have
  included questionnaires on somatic complaints and
  neuroticism to discover whether sensitivity to
  physiological changes may be related to
  rationally repressed fear in some, but not in
  other detectors. We would predict performance on
  intuitive decisions to be best for detectors that
  do not feel unpleasant about their heightened
  sensitivity.

Figure 3 4. Heartrate (beats per minute) was
calculated from the interbeat interval that
included stimulus onset (IBI 1) and the next
interbeat interval (IBI 2). Heartrate showed an
increase while viewing the stimulus word that the
participant would later choose, but only for
non-detectors.
Exploratory analyses We were surprised that the
heartbeat detectors did not show any indication
of being more intuively inclined. To explore this
further, we compared detectors and non-detectors
on all 30 items of the intuition
questionnaire. Fig 5 shows the five items on
which detectors scored significantly different
(ps lt .05, two-tailed) from non-detectors.

• Method
• 62 participants (22 male, 40 female)
• 20 detectors,42 non-detectors classified on
  basis of performance on a heartbeat detection
  task (Wiens Palmer, 2001)
• Intuition questionnaire
• Thirty statements on an intuitive or a rational
  approach.
• Participants indicate occurrence (never to
  always) on 6 point scale
• Implicit grammar task
• Sixty trials, self-paced
• Two excluding algorithms (grammars) generate
  words with different letter orders
• Participants learn implicitly through trial by
  trial feedback to discriminate between exemplars
  of the two grammars

Figure 2. Heartrate (beats per minute) was
calculated from the interbeat interval that
included stimulus onset (IBI 1) and the following
interbeat interval (IBI 2). Heartrate showed an
increase during the stimulus word that the
participant would later choose.
This same analysis for detectors and
non-detectors separately showed the same
significant interaction, but for non-detectors
only (F(1,41)5.03, p .03).(Figs 34).
Figure 1. Course of one trial with sample stimuli
of the two different grammars
AcknowledgmentsA thank you to the psychology
students Nathalie Franke Marlou Hamersma Bart van
der Hel Eva Jesmiatka Floortje van der Meer
Mohr Wouter Pronk Sanne Schepers Alina Talhof for
cheerfully collecting the data.
For further information Please contact Eva
Lobach e.lobach_at_uva.nl, or Dick Bierman
d.j.bierman_at_uva.nl Psychology Department,
University of Amsterdam Roetersstraat 15 1018 WB
Amsterdam Phone [phone] (Eva) or
31 (0)20 525 6727 (Dick)
References Cleeremans, A., Destrebecqz, A., and
Boyer, M. (1998) Implicit learning News from the
front. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5, 406
416. Damasio, A.R. (1994) Descartes Error.
Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York
Grosset/Putman. Taggart, W. en Valenzi, E.
(1990). Assessing rational and intuitive styles
a human information processing metaphor. Journal
of Management Studies, Vol.27, Nr.2, 149-172.
Katkin, E. S., Wiens, S., Öhman, A. (2001).
Nonconscious fear conditioning, visceral
perception, and the development of gut feelings.
Psychological Science, 12, 366-370.
Wiens, S., Katkin, E.S., Öhman, A. (2003).
Effects of trial order and differential
conditioning on acquisition of differential shock
expectancy and skin conductance conditioning to
masked stimuli. Psychophysiology, 40, 989-997.