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Comment by cryzinger | Hacker News Reader

Parasympathetic nervous activation increased risk-taking behavior? That's interesting/unexpected (at least to me). Also, this part caught my eye:

> The selective impact of prolonged exhalation breathing on reward responsiveness has important implications for clinical contexts, such as anxiety, panic disorder, and depression, given their distinct autonomic signatures and maladaptive reward processing. By enhancing cardiac parasympathetic modulation through prolonged exhalation techniques, individuals may restore reward processing, a valuable pathway for emotional recalibration. Prolonged exhalation harbors the potential for a low-cost, low-risk, easily applicable intervention to be incorporated into therapy or rehabilitation programs, especially to support pharmacological treatments.

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I agree it's counterintuitive, but it makes sense when I think about how, for example, it's the least neurotic people who do high-risk activities like base jumping or mountain climbing. Fear drives you away from threatening things, lack of fear allows you to move toward them more comfortably.

In general yes, I do climbing and I can say I only do it when I feel no fear, no adrenalin rush. When I feel fear I stop, otherwise danger of accident.

But I know a base jumper .. and he only does the jumps if he feels the fear and his kick is to overcome it and feel the adrenalin rush.

> But I know a base jumper .. and he only does the jumps if he feels the fear and his kick is to overcome it and feel the adrenalin rush.

This sentence has beautifully crystallised the meaning of what it means to be an adrenalin junkie ^_^

I do a lot of BMX trail riding. Some trails can be quite dangerous, especially at high speed.

I can identify with this “adrenaline junkie” definition, with qualifications. It’s probably different for everyone, but for me it’s more about “playing the edge”. I’ve crashed badly in the past going over that edge, but my-oh-my is it beautiful to approach, and get as close as you can, and look into the abyss for a moment. When the fear becomes too much, you back off. Over time (and survivorship bias!) you grow to have an immense respect for that edge.

Now, when I (rarely) go past the edge, I’m not flying past it to my death, my approach was appropriately calculated to produce a recoverable step-down or at worst a minor side-fall. I haven’t gone over the handlebars in years.

I dont know what you mean by "neurotic", but my impression was that quite a lot of these have mental health issues. In some cases, the risk taking seemed more like hope for suicide in denial. And they tend to be difficult people with broken relationship.

Risk aversion could be looked at in the same lens in my opinion. It’s possible to be risk adverse in a modern society as we have risk takers to do it on your behalf. Policemen and women, firefighters, warfighters, astronauts, test pilots, athletes, etc. But if you’re a deer in the headlights and unable to be willing to push yourself past your preconceived fears and limits, you’re holding yourself back from your true potential. And why might that be the case? Did something happen in one’s life that causes them such behaviors where they’ll always prevent themselves from entering into uncomfortable situations? Anecdote, but there’s someone I know that absolutely avoids anything that could possibly be uncomfortable for him because of an accident that happened in his childhood. It’s all mental.

I mean in the Big 5 personality model sense. Someone who is neurotic is sensitive, more prone to negative emotions including fear. Someone who is low in neuroticism is less fearful and sensitive on average. So for example you could put two people in the situation of being about to jump out of a plane and one would feel terrified for their life while the other would feel only mild apprehension.

EDIT: People are a complex blends of emotions and motivations, so you're certainly right that can be another explanation for the same observable behavior. I really liked the comment about adrenaline junkies too. My point was only that on average it's low-sensitivity people who engage in those sorts of activities. Scaredy cats like myself stay home and read a good book.

The least neurotic people that are still alive :)

Ah, that does make a lot of sense!

"Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear." (George Addair)

Alongside a slew of other things you really, really don’t want.

It makes complete sense. Think about the opposite: When you don't feel safe, you'll want to reduce risk taking.

I was confused when I first read it as well, but the implication is that the higher reward-seeking risk tolerance can actually be more rational than the well-studied loss-aversion bias that the authors mention.

Looking into this more, studies have found that we tend to rate the possible loss of $100 twice as painfully as the pleasure from the possible gain of $100. This can lead to irrational behaviors.

Increasing the weight we give to potential rewards is not necessarily a bad thing.

I think this can help explain the "calming of the nerves" that slow breathing promotes. If you need to speak in public and your heart is racing and you're shaking, this is an irrational reaction to what ought to be a very safe situation. By focusing more on the rewards (the acclaim for a good speech or whatever) and less on the imagined risks, you can calm down and speak naturally.

It seems counterintuitive on the face of it but when I imagined someone forcing themselves to breath slowly I immediaty saw they are about to do something stupid next.

Makes sense to me. The only way I can dip in a snow melt lake is if I slow down my breathing, slow my thinking and dip.

Yes, it's weird. It's like the authors did the experiments, analysed them, understood that their research suggested that slow breathing was having the exact opposite effect of all that the psuedoscience/wellness/psychobabble community have assumed ...

... and then just ran with "yay, slow breathing!! Transformative, amirite??"

And sure, "transformative" is not technically incorrect. But the linguistic implications of that word are almost always positive/beneficial, whereas in this case the transformation is overwhelmingly negative.

At best, the manuscript's language is sloppy; at worst, it's misleading. Very odd. The finding that this technique is actually bad in most cases (every situation where additional risk-taking behaviour is bad) is so interesting. Odd that they almost try to cover it up.

> whereas in this case the transformation is overwhelmingly negative.

> The finding that this technique is actually bad in most cases

Why do you think this?

Yeah, I was expecting some sort of "slow breathing produces calmness/more considered behavior" conclusion. But, the exact opposite? Everyone knows what party monsters those zen meditators are? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Zen party monster... Reporting for duty!

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