The Relationship Between Heart Rate & Behavior In Humans

A higher heart rate is generally associated with behavior such as higher arousal and physical exertion. The National Federation of Personal Trainer's Manual instructs trainers to use heart rate to measure the intensity of an individual client's workout and ensure that a client gets adequate rest between exercises to complete the workout. Your heart rate increases during physical activity such as exercise, and it may relate to other types of social and emotional behavior.

Aggression

The Biosocial Basis of Violence suggests there is a strong correlation between low resting heart rate and anti-social behavior and aggression in children and adolescents. The book references a study in which low resting heart rate predicted delinquency in boys between ages eight and 21 and the lowest heart rates occurred in boys who committed violent criminal offences as adults. A child with a disinhibited temperament may have a low resting heart rate. Good school performance may protect boys with low resting heart rates from aggression. Lack of depression, withdrawal and schizotypy may protect girls with low resting heart rates from aggression.

Anxiety and Antisocial Behavior

A study published in the "Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry" indicates that anxiety may be predictably related to higher heart rates and antisocial behavior may be predictably related to lower heart rates. The study revealed that anxiety may be predictably related to more sympathetic mediation of phasic postural effects on heart rate. Antisocial behavior may be related to disruption of vagally mediated, phasic respiratory effects on heart rate. Researchers conclude that anxiety and antisocial behavior are distinctly related to heart rate and to heart rate variability from musculoskeletal postural and respiration mechanisms in the body.

Selective Attention

Heart rate acceleration may occur while performing tasks that involve environmental rejection. Environmental rejection tasks require mental "elaboration" and filtering out irrelevant information from the environment. In a study published in the "Merrill Palmer Quarterly," children listened to recordings and pointed to pictures that corresponded with objects indicated by the recording. The recordings also featured accessory distraction noises to enhance the difficulty of the task. The study notes that higher heart rates may improve performance on this kind of selective attention tasks and those who handle a particular problem more efficiently and perform better may show higher heart rates.

Shyness

Inhibited children may show higher and more stable heart rates while processing information that is difficult to assimilate than uninhibited children. A study discussed in the "Merril Palmer Quaterly" indicates that inhibited boys showed higher and more stable heart rates when introduced to unfamiliar objects. The study reveled that inhibited girls also showed higher heart rates. Shy and emotional children showed higher heart rates during selective attention tasks. Shy children may become more aroused in the social context of the testing situation.

Alcohol Disinhibition

Intoxicated individuals with higher heart rates made more errors in controlled testing than intoxicated people with low heart rates. An "Environmental and Clinical Psychopharmacology" study tested performance on a "go/no-go" discrimination task before and after alcohol consumption. Participants learned by trial and error to either push a button and "go" with stimuli or refrain from pushing the button. The study notes that intoxicated people with higher heart rates self-reported higher alcohol consumption. The researches conclude that the results of the study suggest that people who have a high heart rate response to alcohol intoxication may have a higher risk for addictive and disinhibited behavior.