An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Physical Activity On Emotional Experience

Embodied cognition theory indicates that physical experience caused by movements,bodies and postures will affect the individual cognitive,thinking and advanced emotional construction,which redefines the relation between bodies and cognition.Studies have shown that the sense of body perception-the movement system,will affect advanced cognition in different ways.Cognition is not only the work result of the brain,but the whole body's effect reflection.As ubiquitous sense of the individual in life,emotion has always been the focus of the study of psychologists research.The traditional emotional theory mostly divides the relationship between emotion and body by the level of cause and effect,such as James Lange's theory,the emotional peripheral theory defines the relationship between emotion and body as the theory of physical and mental sentiment,that is,individuals can feel the different emotional experience,because the individual's physiological changes cause the corresponding emotional experience,which is a typical causal theory;another emotional theory is the theory of psychosomatic mood whose main representative personage is Cannon,stressing that the mood is caused by the perception of central nerve system;besides,there is also a representative emotional theory—Shaht's theory of physical and mental interaction,convincing that emotions are awaken because of physiologic and the common nerve impulses.Traditional emotional theories tend to define the relationship between emotion and bodies as a causal relationship,however,embodied emotion emphasizes on body,mind,the environment of organic unity,where the body and emotions are mutual construction of each other and the whole process is not necessarily the causal relationship,but the whole mutual influence.As a new emotional theory,the embodied cognition theory has opened up a new research direction and a new research approach.In this paper,the author mainly explores the relation between physical movements and emotion under the guidance of the embodied cognition theory,so the three experiments are formed as follows.Experiment 1 is the study of the effects of facial expressions on individual emotional comprehension;the different facial expressions(anger and happiness)were used as independent variables,and the scores of different factors of positive and negative emotional scale were studied as dependent variables.The results of the study validated the experimental hypothesis that the facial expression had an effect on the individual's emotional comprehension and that the subjects in the happy group scored high on the positive emotional factors and that the angry group scored high on the negative emotional factors.Experiment 2 is the study on the effect of hand movement on individual emotional expression.The different factors of hand movement(fist and control)were taken as independent variables and emotional expression scale.The results of the study verify that the first group is more likely to express the mood.The subjects in the control group are higher than those in the first group in the emotional expression difficulty and the suppression factor.Experiment 3 is the study of the effect of body posture on individual self-efficacy;the experiment applied a different physical posture(sitting and bending)as an independent variable,and self-efficiency score was used as the dependent variable.The experimental results confirm the experimental hypothesis that the sitting group gets higher self-efficacy scores,whereas the bending group takes a reverse turn.Experimental studies confirm the hypothesis that physical movements can effectively influence the individual's emotional understanding and expression,and even impact the formation and development of self-concept.