A wise heart for a wise mind

What do you picture when you think of wisdom? Perhaps you see a motherly woman with kind eyes? Maybe you see a man with a long white beard and a big stick? However you embody it, we most commonly associate wisdom as a quality of the mind but a new study has shown that it is a quality of your heart, or heart rate, as well.

The human heart rate is not constant, it tends to vary even when a person is doing something static such as sitting.

Philosophers have long sought to define wisdom. Aristotle defined wisdom as the understanding of causes. Descartes said that wisdom lies in two actions: doubting and thinking upon God. For the modern philosopher and cognitive scientist however, the general consensus is that wise judgement includes the ability to recognise the limits of your knowledge, to be aware of the various contexts of life and how they may unfold, to acknowledge other points of view, and to seek reconciliation of opposing viewpoints. The new study found that this modern idea of wisdom is linked to heart rate.

The human heart rate is not constant, it tends to vary even when a person is doing something static such as sitting. The term heart rate variability (HRV) refers to variations in the time interval between heart beats and results from nervous system control.

In the study, subjects heart rate variability was assessed and then they undertook a test of wisdom that required them to think about a social issue. The results showed that when instructed to think about the problem from a third-person point of view, people with greater HRV were able to reason with a wiser, less biased perspective than people with less variability in heart rate. Interestingly, when asked to think about the problem from a more personal first person perspective there was no increase in wisdom with increased variability in heart rate.

The researchers say this fits with other research showing that people with greater heart rate variability also show superior performance in the brain’s executive functions such as working memory. So the people with greater heart rate variability may have greater wisdom but they need to get over the egocentric world view to realise it.

It seems as though wisdom is not a constant after all.