August 27, 2021
Keio University
A joint research group, including Professor Yasuyo Minagawa and Associate Professor Yuri Terasawa from the Psychology Laboratory, Faculty of Letters, Keio University; Professor Norihisa Miki from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University; and Project Assistant Professor Ming-Hsuan Hsu from the Keio University Global Research Institute, has demonstrated that vibrational stimuli from a smartwatch mimicking one's own heartbeat can act on the autonomic nervous system under stressful situations, such as public speaking, to produce a tension-relieving effect that slows the heart rate. However, they also revealed that this effect depends on an individual's ability to perceive their internal bodily states (interoception). The effect is stronger for those with more accurate interoception and less likely to be observed in those with less accuracy.
It was previously known that artificial heartbeats, such as sounds mimicking one's own heartbeat, can influence human emotions and moods, but the actual presence of this effect varied across studies. This research suggests that individual differences in interoception may have caused these conflicting results. It is conceivable that depending on an individual's ability to perceive their internal bodily states (e.g., heart rate, perspiration), their reception of self-related bodily information presented externally through vibration (artificial heartbeats) differs, ultimately leading to different effects on their emotions. These findings are expected to lead to the development of smart devices for effective emotion regulation by customizing the artificial heartbeat effect according to an individual's interoception.
The results of this research are scheduled to be published in "Biological Psychology" and were released online on August 17, 2021.
Please see below for the full press release.