Changing the way we walk can change our mood and boost our happiness, a study found.
It’s long been known that our mood affects our posture: sad people slump their shoulders while happy people bounce along the street.
Now researchers have shown it works the other way too – making people imitate a happy or sad way of walking actually affects their mood.
People who were prompted to walk in a more depressed style, with less arm movement and their shoulders rolled forward, experienced worse moods than those prompted to walk in a happier way.
The study’s co-author Professor Nikolaus Troje, of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, has shown in past research that depressed people move very differently than happy people.
He said: ‘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.’
To test this, he and his colleagues showed participants a list of positive and negative words, such as ‘pretty,’ ‘afraid’ and ‘anxious’.
They were then asked to walk on a treadmill while they measured their movement and posture.
A screen showed the participants a gauge that moved left or right depending on whether their walking style was more depressed or happier.
But people didn’t know what the gauge was measuring.
Researchers told some participants to try and move the gauge left, while others were told to move it right.
‘They would learn very quickly to walk the way we wanted them to walk’ Professor Troje said.
Afterwards, the 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.
The study was published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
