<p>Resting heart rate variability (HRV) is commonly used as an indicator of vagal nerve tone, reflecting an individual’s self-regulation ability in terms of adaptability and flexibility within the autonomic nervous system when confronted with novel environmental-stimuli. Past researches have suggested a link between HRV and inhibition. However, inconsistent results exist in healthy individuals and the underlying mechanism between HRV and inhibitory function remain unclear. The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between resting HRV and different inhibitory control including cognitive inhibition and response inhibition by examining event-related potentials (ERPs) during the performance of a NoGo-Flanker task. We measured 5-minute resting electrocardiograms of 54 college students before they were asked to complete a NoGo-Flanker task. The hierarchical regression analyses results showed that higher high frequency-HRV (HF-HRV) was associated with a reduced amplitude of N2 different wave (incongruent minus congruent trials), particularly for NoGo stimuli. This result suggested that a higher HRV was indicative of less cognitive resource allocation in resolving cognitive conflict. However, no worse task performance was found in the behavioral data of individuals with higher resting HRV. The results of this study suggested that higher levels of HRV predicted more effective use of cognitive resources, particularly in terms of behavioral inhibition.</p>