Taking a lunchtime walk provides employees with a much-needed afternoon mood boost.
A team of researchers led by psychological scientist Cecilie Thøgersen-Ntoumani of Curtin University in Australia made use of a specially designed cell phone app to gauge the changes in people’s mood in the moment, in an attempt to get a more accurate picture of how exercise influences mood throughout the workday.
Analysis of the responses showed that those who took a lunchtime walk were more relaxed and less stressed at work compared to the non-walking control group. On walking days people said they felt less tense and more relaxed and enthusiastic about work than on their non-walking days.
In addition, walking had a significant influence on people’s mood as the day progressed; on days that people took a walk, they felt considerably more enthusiastic and relaxed at work during the afternoon even compared to their mood on the same day in the morning before the walk.
“Walking therefore seems to have both energizing and relaxing properties in the workplace, which supports the main hypothesis of the study,” Thøgersen-Ntoumani writes in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.
A follow-up study published in the journal Mental Health and Physical Activity found that lunchtime walkers also perceived that their work performance improved after their walk. The positive changes were surprisingly long-lasting—walking-related gains in work performance and mood were reported up to four months after the official intervention had concluded.
One explanation for why a short stroll packs such a mood-elevating punch is that taking a walk may help people mentally recover during the day, replenishing depleted mental resources and helping people cope with stress. In addition to the exercise itself, Thøgersen-Ntoumani and colleagues suggest that socializing during the walks may also have provided a mood boost.
Given that previous research has found that affective experiences at work are linked to workplace performance, these results may have broader implications for the success of companies. However, as workplace productivity was not measured directly, future research should specifically investigate the influence of physical activity on performance.
Source: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/minds-business/walking-at-lunchtime-buffers-against-workplace-stress.html