Key result
Moderate resting RSA linked to high agreeableness in Chinese students.
Why the study?
More evidence was needed to demonstrate the proposed quadratic association between cardiac vagal regulation and agreeableness.
Is there a quadratic association between resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia and agreeableness in Chinese students?
Cross-Sectional
Is there a quadratic association between resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia and agreeableness in Chinese students?
There is a robust quadratic association between resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia and agreeableness, suggesting moderate cardiac vagal regulation is linked to higher prosociality.
Quadratic vagal-agreeableness link replicated in large Chinese samples; extends prior evidence but leaves open causal and clinical implications.
OBJECTIVE: Previous studies showed that cardiac vagal regulation is quadratically associated with prosociality. Preliminary evidence also indicated that agreeableness, which is considered to reflect the propensity of prosociality, was quadratically associated with cardiac vagal regulation. However, more evidence is needed to demonstrate the quadratic association between cardiac vagal regulation and agreeableness. The present study investigated this issue with relatively large samples of Chinese middle school and college students. METHOD: = 18.99, SD = 0.98, 266 females) to assess their agreeableness. The electrocardiogram data were collected to compute participants' resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) as an indicator of cardiac vagal regulation. RESULTS: Low and high resting RSA were associated with low agreeableness; moderate resting RSA was associated with high agreeableness in both samples of middle school and college students. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrated a robust quadratic association between resting RSA and agreeableness across two Chinese samples, which deepens our understanding of the biological foundations of agreeableness and provides trait-level evidence for the quadratic resting RSA-prosociality relationship.
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X et al. (2026) conducted a cross-sectional in Healthy students (assessing agreeableness and resting RSA). Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was evaluated on Agreeableness. Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia demonstrated a robust quadratic association with agreeableness, where moderate resting RSA was associated with high agreeableness in Chinese students.
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