Stretch Those Blues Away: Group Exercise For Lowering Anxiety
Written by Elyse Ehlert
Edited by Emily Fucarino
March 21, 2022
Edited by Emily Fucarino
March 21, 2022
Imagine if you could get your daily dose of social interaction and exercise in just 60 minutes… while simultaneously lowering your anxiety. Sounds great, doesn’t it? As it turns out, you might be able to. In a sample study of 490 college students, researchers found that group exercise may help college students reduce their anxiety. The 2019 study, conducted at a private Southern university, looked at the connections between being a member of a group exercise program, peer exercise habits, and anxiety using social network analysis (SNA). SNA analyzes how a person’s behavior and health are impacted by their relationships with others, and can be an invaluable tool when investigating social influences.
In order to analyze the impact of group exercise on students' anxiety, the chosen participants included both members and non-members of the university’s exercise program. Using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) to determine anxiety levels and the Godin LTEQ to measure students’ physical activity, researchers found that exercise program membership correlated with lower anxiety levels. Furthermore, they observed that the average exercise score for all students were relatively similar though anxiety levels differed significantly based on membership. From this, researchers inferred that simply being in a group setting instead of exercising individually could lead to lower anxiety levels.
However, participants with more frequently active peers also had higher anxiety scores. According to Festinger’s social comparison theory, this may be due to a person’s tendency to self-evaluate themselves based on others’ actions. While this may be the case for some, research has also shown that a supportive atmosphere, like one may find in an exercise program, can help participants both physically and mentally improve. When it comes to discrepancies such as these, one must look at each active environment and the specific individual to understand how it may affect their anxiety.
This study’s findings are more important than ever, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing anxiety in college students, we can find resources to help reduce anxiety, such as group exercise, that can hopefully be enacted in universities across the world.
Image Source: "Group Exercise Guys” by Victor Mashevsky