Introduction: Studies have repeatedly stated the importance of individual differences in the problem of emotion recognition. The primary focus of this study is to predict Heart Rate Variability (HRV) changes due to affective stimuli from the individual characteristics. These features include age (A), gender (G), linguality (L), and sleep (S). In addition, the best combination of individual variables was explored to estimate emotional HRV.
Methods: To this end, HRV indices of 47 college students exposed to images with four emotional categories of happiness, sadness, fear, and relaxation were analyzed. Then, a novel predictive model was introduced based on the regression equation.
Results: The results show that different emotional situations provoke the importance of different individual variable combinations. The best variables arrangements to predict HRV changes due to emotional provocations are LS, GL, GA, ALS, and GALS. However, these combinations were changed according to each subject separately.
Conclusion: The suggested simple model effectively offers new insight into emotion studies regarding subject characteristics and autonomic parameters.