The Calming Effect of Heartbeat Vibration

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated a connection between emotions and bodily signals such as heart rate. For example, they have found that self-reported anxiety can be reduced by perceiving heartbeat-like vibration, and users experiencing their own heartbeats via vibration have reported that they felt calmer. However, whether the influence of haptic heartbeat feedback occurs at the physiological level has not yet been investigated, and previous studies were limited to the recovering effect from stress. Here, we investigated whether heartbeat feedback provided by a haptic device has a positive effect on physiological reactions in a relaxing activity. Specifically, we assessed the heart rate variability when users received haptic feedback from their own heartbeat. In addition, we used heartbeat sound as auditory feedback to investigate whether it has an influence on those reactions. Our results show that the heartbeat vibration influenced the users’ heart rate variability and helped them physiologically relax. On the other hand, no effect of heartbeat sounds was observed. We also examined the influence of both feedback on participants’ self-reported anxiety and found no effect. These findings provide insights into the involuntary effects of heartbeat feedback at deeper levels and open up the possibility of developing a haptic biofeedback device.