Physical activity is beneficial for human physical health and well‐being. Accordingly, the association between physical activity and mood in everyday life has been a subject of several Ambulatory Assessment studies. This mechanism has been studied in children, adults and the elderly, but neglected in adolescents. It is critical to examine this mechanism in adolescents because adolescence plays a key role in human development and adolescents’ physical activity behavior translates into their behavior in adulthood.
In a recently accepted study we investigated adolescents’ mood in relation to distinct physical activities: incidental activity such as climbing stairs; exercise activity, such as skating; and sports, such as playing soccer. We equipped 134 adolescents aged 12‐17 years with accelerometers and GPS‐triggered electronic diaries to use in their everyday life. Adolescents reported on mood repeatedly in real‐time across seven days and this data was analyzed using multilevel‐modeling.
Results in short are: After incidental activity, adolescents felt better and more energized. After exercise, adolescents felt better but less calm. After sports, adolescents felt less energized. Analyses of the time course of the effects confirmed our findings.
Physical activity influences mood in adolescents’ everyday life, but has distinct effects depending on the kind of physical activity. Our results suggest incidental and exercise activities entails higher post‐bout valence compared to sports in competitive settings. These findings may serve as an important empirical basis for the targeted application of distinct physical activities to foster well‐being in adolescence.
Koch E. D., H. Tost, U. Braun, G. Gan, M. Giurgiu, I. Reinhard, A. Zipf, A. Meyer‐Lindenberg, U. Ebner‐Priemer, M. Reichert (2020): Relationships between Incidental Physical Activity, Exercise, and Sports with subsequent Mood in Adolescents. The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.13774
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Reichert, M., Braun, U., Lautenbach, S., Zipf, A., Ebner-Priemer, U., Tost, H., Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2020): Studying the impact of built environments on human mental health in everyday life: methodological developments, state-of-the-art and technological frontiers. Current Opinion in Psychology 32, 158-164.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.08.026
Tost, H., Reichert, M., Braun, U., Reinhard, I., Peters, R. , Lautenbach, S., Andreas, H., Schwarz, E., Ebner-Priemer, U., Zipf, A., Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2019): Neural correlates of individual differences in affective benefit of real-life urban green space exposure. Nature Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-019-0451-y
Novack, T., Wang, Z., Zipf, A. (2018): A System for Generating Customized Pleasant Pedestrian Routes Based on OpenStreetMap Data. Sensors 2018, 18, 3794. https://doi.org/10.3390/s18113794
Reichert, M., Giurgiu, M., Koch, E., Wieland, L.M., Lautenbach, S., Neubauer, A.B., von Haaren-Mack, B., Schilling, R., Timm, I., Notthoff, N., Marzi, I., Hill, H., Brüßler, S., Eckert, T., Fiedler, J., Burchartz, A., Anedda, B., Wunsch, K., Gerber, M., Jekauc, D., Woll, A., Dunton, G.F., Kanning, M., Nigg, C.R., Ebner-Priemer, U., Liao, Y. (2020): Ambulatory assessment for physical activity research: State of the science, best practices and future directions. Psychology of Sport and Exercise 101742. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2020.101742
Törnros, T., Dorn, H., Reichert, M., Ebner-Priemer, U., Salize, H.-J., Tost, H., Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Zipf, A. (2016): A comparison of temporal and location-based sampling strategies for GPS-triggered electronic diaries.” Geospatial Health. Vol 11, No 3. DOI:10.4081/gh.2016.473.
Reichert, M., Törnros, T., Hoell, A., Dorn, H., Tost, H., Salize, H.-J., Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Zipf, A., Ebner-Priemer, U. W. (2016). Using Ambulatory Assessment for experience sampling and the mapping of environmental risk factors in everyday life. Die Psychiatrie. 2/2016. 94-102. (pdf)