Small Amounts of Physical Activity During the COVID-19 Pandemic May Contribute to Improve Empathy in Young Adults: An Observational Study

Abstract

Decreases of direct face-to-face contact during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic would impair human empathy, an essential skill for maintaining relationships with others. Although physical activity amount relates to empathy, it remains unclear the effects of physical activity on empathy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four hundred and twenty-six college students’ usual amounts of physical activity and sitting time were measured through monitoring from October to December 2020 with the questionnaire, and subjects were divided into active and inactive groups. Before and after monitoring, cognitive and affective empathy in subjects was evaluated with the questionnaire. Both cognitive and affective empathy scores were unchanged during monitoring in subjects. However, affective empathy’s change rate in the inactive group was higher than that in the active group. Furthermore, affective empathy’s change rate was negatively correlated with sitting time in inactive group subjects, implying that staying at home with a few amounts of physical activity would contribute to treating empathy in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Influences of Changes in Physical Activity Levels With Easing Restriction of Access to the University Campus on Empathy and Social Supports in College Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Previous studies have reported possibilities that physical activity and sports experiences alter self-reported empathy in healthy adults. 2-4 Since the current findings, human affective empathy could be sensitive to physical activity compared to cognitive empathy. However, the effect sizes of the current results were small; thus, we should investigate in depth.…”

“…Although it is difficult to determine the causality, an increase in physical activity levels in college students would be a possibility to contribute to making their relationship better with family via increasing affective empathy, based on current results (Table 2) and previous studies. 4,10 Thus, our findings suggest that increasing physical activity levels after easing campus-access-restriction would lead to a better quality of life in young adults.…”

“…We have already found that usual physical activity levels and sports activities could increase empathy in young adults. 2-4 Since that, physical activity would have the potential to enhance human empathy.…”

Augmented-reality-based multi-person exercise has more beneficial effects on mood state and oxytocin secretion than standard solitary exercise

“…Oxytocin is also associated with empathy (Meyer-Lindenberg et al, 2011), and several studies have reported that oxytocin administration enhances empathy and related behaviors in humans (Auyeung et al, 2015;Geng et al, 2018). Considering that physical activities also contribute to enhancing empathy (Shima et al, 2022a(Shima et al, , 2022b(Shima et al, , 2021c(Shima et al, , 2021a(Shima et al, , 2021b, it is conceivable that exercise-induced oxytocin secretion plays a role in enhancing empathy. Therefore, AR-based multi-person exercise may have more beneficial effects on enhancing empathy than standard exercise, warranting further investigation.…”