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Welcome to ATP—All Things Psychology, a newsletter that brings research from Psychology & Neuroscience straight to your inbox, with one goal: To help you leverage science to improve your life.
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Have you ever made a bad decision when you were rushed or stressed?
You probably have, like eating that chocolate bar you wouldn’t eat in a calm state (that has, of course, never happened to me! 😉).
Decision-making is more than analyzing the potential costs and benefits of different options and then choosing the best one. A new study suggests that the current state of your nervous system influences the risks you take, and that you can control this state by the way you breathe.
What the researchers did
In this new study, 41 participants played a gambling task:
In each round, they had to choose between accepting or rejecting a gamble.
The probability of either winning or losing the gamble in each round was 50%.
What changed in each round was the magnitude of the potential win and loss.
Example of a round where, in the event of a win (50% chance), you earn 10 Euros, and in the event of a loss (50% chance), you lose 5 Euros. These magnitudes varied across rounds, with potential wins ranging from 10€ to 30€ and potential losses from 5€ to 15€.
Each participant played the gambling game under two different breathing conditions:
Natural breathing (eupnea): breathing according to their usual rhythm
Slow breathing: Breathing with longer exhales than inhales in a 2:8 ratio (inhale for 2 seconds & exhale for 8)
Researchers measured the following:
Risk-taking behavior in the gambling task
Electrocardiogram
Respiration
Electrodermal activity (skin conductance, a marker of the sympathetic nervous system)
Pupillometry (pupil size)
Brain activity (through functional magnetic resonance imaging; fMRI)
What they found
Data from the respiration measurements showed that people slowed their breathing rhythm in the slow-breathing condition, so they complied with the breathing instructions.
The electrocardiogram confirmed that parasympathetic activity increased during slow breathing. This result was expected, because it’s well established that long exhales activate the parasympathetic nervous system (the one that calms you down; also referred to as the ‘rest-and-digest’ system).
Slow breathing had no significant effect on electrodermal activity or pupil size, indicating no evidence of a change in the sympathetic (‘fight-or-flight’) nervous system.
But here’s the most novel and interesting finding: Slow breathing increased risky choices. With longer exhales than inhales, participants not only entered a calmer state but also accepted more gambles in the gambling task.
The difference in risk-taking between the slow-breathing and normal-breathing conditions was driven by enhanced sensitivity to rewards during slow breathing. In other words, slow breathing made participants more likely to accept the gamble when the potential reward was high. The sensitivity to potential losses didn’t differ between breathing conditions.
At the brain level, participants who showed a larger increase in parasympathetic activation during slow breathing also showed stronger activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain region implicated in reward evaluation, and the precuneus, which may integrate signals from the body and use them for decision-making.
This brain activation finding aligns with the result of enhanced reward sensitivity in the gambling task.
What the results mean
The novel finding is that breathing patterns can shift risk-taking behavior: slow breathing made people take more risks in a gambling task.
That fits well with a study we covered in a recent newsletter, in which people in an upright posture took more risks than those in a contractive posture.
In general, both the posture study and the present breathing study show that risk-taking behavior is much more complex than simply analyzing the potential costs and benefits of different options and choosing the one that appears more advantageous. Your body’s current state also plays a role in the decisions you make.
What it means for real life
The results of this new study suggest that the current state of your nervous system could make you less or more receptive to recognizing the potential rewards that come with a certain option.
So, taking an upright posture and breathing slowly could give you a different perspective whenever you’re making a decision, but it could also increase the risks you take (which isn’t always what you want!).
What else I’ve been up to:
My new Medium article talks about 5 evening habits that sabotage your sleep, and therefore also your brain. And yes, I had all these habits myself in the past. 😬
Here’s the article:
Not a Medium member? Read it for free with my friend link.
That’s it for today!
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Until next time!
Best wishes,
Patricia (Dr. Patricia Schmidt) from creatorschmidt.com
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