Further Comment on the Significance of Heart Rate in Cross‐Laboratory Comparison

Norman and Melville appear to feel that differences from laboratory to laboratory are so pervasive and effective that no useful cross‐laboratory interpretations of differences in HR can be made. Elliott argues that the differences, and the absolute levels as well, are useful clues to motivational states, in rough proportion to the size of the samples involved, given certain boundary conditions about what we are willing to call “rest”; and that many of the dimensions of difference said by Norman and Melville to be fundamental are probably irrelevant. A variety of misrepresentations of Elliott's case made by Norman and Melville are discussed.