Listen to Your Heart – Studying Heartbeat Detection and Emotional Intelligence

Perception of emotions is at the basis of scientific literature about emotions and is considered a crucial emotional function in the Mayer and Salovey hierarchical model of Emotional Intelligence. The perception of bodily signals plays an important role in the perception of one’s own and others’ emotions. Thus, the first aim of this study was to verify if interoceptive ability, referred to as the ability to perceive bodily signals or autonomic self-perception, is related to individuals’ emotional abilities measured with the MSCEIT (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, 2002). Results evidenced a positive relationship between total EI and experiential area scores (perceiving emotions and sensations) and interoceptive performance scores. A second aim was to investigate if the artificial augmentation of the cardiac perception improved performances in the same tasks. Results showed that the augmented perception of the heartbeat signal did not influence any performance in MSCEIT’s subtests. We concluded that there is a significant relationship between EI and interoceptive ability but that the artificial augmentation of the perception of bodily signals does not influence MSCEIT performances.