Leisure walks modulate the cognitive and affective representation of the corona pandemic: Employing Cognitive-Affective Maps within a randomized experimental design

Abstract

In response to the corona pandemic, many leisure activities have been restricted while walking has been explicitly endorsed by health authorities. We investigated how leisure walking affects individuals' attitudes to the pandemic. We used Cognitive-Affective Maps (CAMs) to measure individual's cognitive and affective attitudes toward the corona pandemic and related issues. In a controlled randomized experiment, we asked (N = 66) participants to draw a CAM before and after a walk. Participants in a control group drew CAMs before and after any self-chosen activity at home. We found that walking led to a more negative evaluation of the pandemic itself, likely due to a more intense reflection, while in everyday routines one has already adapted to it. In further qualitative post hoc assessments of the CAMs, we observed that negative concepts other than corona disappeared after walking. We conclude that leisure walks have complex effects on individuals' cognitive and affective conceptualization of the corona pandemic. Hence, the exact mechanisms of these effects need to be examined in future research. Our study has also shown that CAMs are a promising tool for measuring experimental interventions in health psychology.