It’s well-known that when we’re in a good mood, our style of walking tends to reflect how we feel: we bounce along, shoulders back, swinging our arms in style.
Now, a new study finds that it also works the other way around: people who imitate a happy style of walking, even without realising it, find themselves feeling happier (Michalak et al., 2015).
The study had participants walking on a treadmill after looking at a list of positive and negative words.
While on the treadmill each person’s gait and posture was continuously measured and fed back to them visually.
On the screen they had to try and move a bar either one way or the other by changing their walking style.
Although they didn’t realise it, walking in a happy way made the bar move in one direction and walking in a depressed way moved it the other.
Read the rest of this article at - http://www.spring.org.uk/2014/10/how-to-feel-happy-just-by-walking-differently.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PsychologyBlog+%28PsyBlog%29
