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Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity

Physical activity, both exercise and non-exercise, has far-reaching benefits to physical health. Although exercise has also been linked to psychological health (e.g., happiness), little research has examined physical activity more broadly, taking into account non-exercise activity as well as exercis...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lathia, Neal, Sandstrom, Gillian M., Mascolo, Cecilia, Rentfrow, Peter J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5213770/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28052069
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160589
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author Lathia, Neal
Sandstrom, Gillian M.
Mascolo, Cecilia
Rentfrow, Peter J.
author_facet Lathia, Neal
Sandstrom, Gillian M.
Mascolo, Cecilia
Rentfrow, Peter J.
author_sort Lathia, Neal
collection PubMed
description Physical activity, both exercise and non-exercise, has far-reaching benefits to physical health. Although exercise has also been linked to psychological health (e.g., happiness), little research has examined physical activity more broadly, taking into account non-exercise activity as well as exercise. We examined the relationship between physical activity (measured broadly) and happiness using a smartphone application. This app has collected self-reports of happiness and physical activity from over ten thousand participants, while passively gathering information about physical activity from the accelerometers on users' phones. The findings reveal that individuals who are more physically active are happier. Further, individuals are happier in the moments when they are more physically active. These results emerged when assessing activity subjectively, via self-report, or objectively, via participants' smartphone accelerometers. Overall, this research suggests that not only exercise but also non-exercise physical activity is related to happiness. This research further demonstrates how smartphones can be used to collect large-scale data to examine psychological, behavioral, and health-related phenomena as they naturally occur in everyday life.
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spelling pubmed-52137702017-01-19 Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity Lathia, Neal Sandstrom, Gillian M. Mascolo, Cecilia Rentfrow, Peter J. PLoS One Research Article Physical activity, both exercise and non-exercise, has far-reaching benefits to physical health. Although exercise has also been linked to psychological health (e.g., happiness), little research has examined physical activity more broadly, taking into account non-exercise activity as well as exercise. We examined the relationship between physical activity (measured broadly) and happiness using a smartphone application. This app has collected self-reports of happiness and physical activity from over ten thousand participants, while passively gathering information about physical activity from the accelerometers on users' phones. The findings reveal that individuals who are more physically active are happier. Further, individuals are happier in the moments when they are more physically active. These results emerged when assessing activity subjectively, via self-report, or objectively, via participants' smartphone accelerometers. Overall, this research suggests that not only exercise but also non-exercise physical activity is related to happiness. This research further demonstrates how smartphones can be used to collect large-scale data to examine psychological, behavioral, and health-related phenomena as they naturally occur in everyday life. Public Library of Science 2017-01-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5213770/ /pubmed/28052069 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160589 Text en © 2017 Lathia et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lathia, Neal
Sandstrom, Gillian M.
Mascolo, Cecilia
Rentfrow, Peter J.
Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity
title Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity
title_full Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity
title_fullStr Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity
title_full_unstemmed Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity
title_short Happier People Live More Active Lives: Using Smartphones to Link Happiness and Physical Activity
title_sort happier people live more active lives: using smartphones to link happiness and physical activity
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5213770/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28052069
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160589
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