Attention and cardiac phase boost judgments of trust

Fluctuations in mental and bodily states have both been shown to be associated with negative affective experience. Here we examined how momentary fluctuations in attentional and cardiac states combine to regulate the perception of positive social value. Faces varying in trustworthiness were presented during a go/no-go letter target discrimination task synchronized with systolic or diastolic cardiac phase. Go trials lead to an attentional boosting of perceived trust on high trust and ambiguous neutral faces, suggesting attention both boosted existing and generated positive social value. Cardiac phase during face presentation interacted with attentional boosting of trust, enhancing high trust faces specifically during relaxed diastolic cardiac states. Confidence judgments revealed that attentional trust boosting, and its cardiac modulation, did not reflect altered perceptual or response fluency. These results provide evidence for how moment-to moment fluctuations in top-down mental and bottom-up bodily inputs combine to enhance a priori and generate de novo positive social value.