Stressful Days At Work Leave Us Less Likely To Exercise

By Emily Reynolds After an incredibly stressful day of work, which are you more likely to do: walk several miles home, or get on a bus straight to your door? While the first option certainly comes with increased health benefits — including, potentially, decreased stress — many of us would choose the second anyway. A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, seeks to understand why, even when we know how positive exercise can be, we often fail to be active after work. It could come down to how high-pressure your job is, according to Sascha Abdel Hadi from Justus-Liebig-University Giessen and team — and how much control you have over your work. In the first study, 100 participants took part in a workplace simulation. Adopting the role of a call centre worker, participants answered emails from customers, solved maths problems related to product pricing and promotions, and answered a live customer call. In the low demand condition, emails and phone calls were from friendly customers, while in the high demand condition, customers were disgruntled; maths problems also ranged in difficulty based on condition. High demand participants were also explicitly instructed to “serve with a smile”, while the low demand condition only required “acting authentically”. Following these tasks, participants were invited to ride (up to a maximum of fifteen minutes) on a static bike in the break room, for as long as they wanted, after ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Occupational Sport Source Type: blogs