The Way You Walk May Affect Your Mood

Various studies in the recent past have stressed on how our mood or mental health can have a significant effect on our behaviour and day to day activities. A new study throws up something rather fascinating. Published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, the study shows that our style of walking can significantly affect our mood. "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, co-author of the paper.According to Troje, subjects who were prompted to walk in a more depressed style, with less arm movement and their shoulders rolled forward, experienced worse moods than those who were induced to walk in a happier style. Troje along with his team-mate tried analyzing if at all the style of walking or performing any other physical activity can have any effect on our mood and other related processes. For the study, 39 undergraduates were made to walk on a treadmill with a  series of mood related words being showed to them. During the process the participants were asked to walk in a certain way to either reflect the characteristics of a depressed or a happy walking style."They would learn very quickly to walk the way we wanted them to walk," Troje said.The participants were then asked 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 more of negative words.The study concluded that the difference in the recall suggests that the depressed walking style actually created a more depressed mood. The study helps in understanding how our mood can affect memory. Clinically depressed patients are known to remember negative events, particularly those about themselves, much more than positive life events. "If you can break that self-perpetuating cycle, you might have a strong therapeutic tool to work with depressive patients," Troje said.Inputs from PTI