Self-Regulatory Challenges in Decision-Making: Cardiac Autonomic Modulation in Ambiguous, Risky, and Moral Situations

Decision-making is key to human behaviour, which greatly relies on self-regulation. Self-regulation encompasses the ability and capacity to direct thoughts, feelings, and behaviour towards a specific goal. An objective measure of self-regulatory ability is resting cardiac vagal tone. Cardiac vagal tone indicates the activity of the vagus nerve that modulates heart rate and can be quantified by heart rate variability (HRV). Compared to low resting HRV, high resting HRV has been associated with general health and adaptive self-regulatory ability. Although decision-making is highly situational, little is known about self-regulatory capacities that are utilised in different decision situations. This makes continuous HRV analysis across resting, decision-making, and recovery phases relevant for assessing in situ self-regulatory capacity, but it is still in its infancy in this field. Three empirical articles in this dissertation contribute to a better understanding of in situ self-regulation in decision-making. For this purpose, continuous HRV analysis is performed across decision-making situations involving ambiguity and risk (Article 1), and moral dilemmas (Article 2). Results from both articles challenge the view that high resting HRV is generally associated with adaptive self-regulation that benefits decision-making. They contribute to a nuanced understanding of the situations and phases in which high HRV is either adaptive or maladaptive. Article 3 examines the influence of perceived stress on moral decision-making among emergency services personnel, a group that frequently makes decisions under stress. Results show that high perceived stress leads to fewer decisions that maximise the collective benefit, but stressed leaders make more such decisions. This suggests that responsibility for others influences self-regulatory processes in moral situations. Taken together, this dissertation provides new insights regarding in situ self-regulation and adaptive performance across different decision-making situations. The present results highlight that continuous HRV analysis can be used as an objective measure to assess the interaction between the heart and the brain in complex decision-making situations, holding untapped potential for research and practice.