Mindfulness and Divergent Thinking: The Value of Heart Rate Variability as an Objective Manipulation Check

Abstract

Mindfulness (MF) is a form of mental training that has been linked to increased creativity in problem-solving. Most MF studies recruit participants interested in meditation, and thus are biased towards positive effects. Participants in this study (n = 73) therefore signed up for "mental training," not "mindfulness meditation"; the vast majority (54) had little to no prior meditation experience. This is also the first such experiment to use an objective measure of MF (coherence, a physiological correlate of MF that can be indexed by heart rate variability or HRV) as a manipulation check. Participants were randomly assigned to either MF training or a control condition (a memory exercise), and completed a test of divergent thinking (Unusual Uses Task) before and after mental training. Coherence was significantly higher in the MF group and heart rate was significantly lower in the MF group.