How you move reveals your mood
Study shows people who walk with less arm movement experience frequent bad moods.
TORONTO:
Are you trampling across your house after a busy day at the office? We know you’re angry. Recent research has found that how people walk can disclose whether they are happy or sad. Interesting, isn’t it?
The study inferred that people who were prompted to walk in a more depressed style, with less arm movement and shoulders rolled forward, experienced worse moods than those who were induced to walk in a happier style.
“It is not surprising that our mood, the way we feel, affects how we walk but we want to see whether the way we move also affects how we feel,” said Nikolaus Troje from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.
For the study, researchers showed participants a list of positive and negative words such as ‘pretty’, ‘afraid’ and ‘anxious’, and then asked them to walk on a treadmill while they measured their gait and posture. A screen showed the a gauge to the subjects, which moved left or right, depending on whether their walking style was happy or depressed. The subjects did not know what the gauge was measuring.
Researchers told some subjects to try and move the gauge left, while others were told to move it right. Afterwards, participants had to write down as many words as they could remember from the earlier list of positive and negative words.
“Those who had been walking in a depressed style remembered many more negative words. The difference in recall suggests that the depressed walking style actually created a more depressed mood,” Troje explained. Clinically depressed patients are known to remember negative events and their memory makes them feel worse.
“If you can break that self-perpetuating cycle, you might have a strong therapeutic tool to work with depressive patients,” researchers noted. The study was published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 17th, 2014.
Are you trampling across your house after a busy day at the office? We know you’re angry. Recent research has found that how people walk can disclose whether they are happy or sad. Interesting, isn’t it?
The study inferred that people who were prompted to walk in a more depressed style, with less arm movement and shoulders rolled forward, experienced worse moods than those who were induced to walk in a happier style.
“It is not surprising that our mood, the way we feel, affects how we walk but we want to see whether the way we move also affects how we feel,” said Nikolaus Troje from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.
For the study, researchers showed participants a list of positive and negative words such as ‘pretty’, ‘afraid’ and ‘anxious’, and then asked them to walk on a treadmill while they measured their gait and posture. A screen showed the a gauge to the subjects, which moved left or right, depending on whether their walking style was happy or depressed. The subjects did not know what the gauge was measuring.
Researchers told some subjects to try and move the gauge left, while others were told to move it right. Afterwards, participants had to write down as many words as they could remember from the earlier list of positive and negative words.
“Those who had been walking in a depressed style remembered many more negative words. The difference in recall suggests that the depressed walking style actually created a more depressed mood,” Troje explained. Clinically depressed patients are known to remember negative events and their memory makes them feel worse.
“If you can break that self-perpetuating cycle, you might have a strong therapeutic tool to work with depressive patients,” researchers noted. The study was published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 17th, 2014.