Cardiorespiratory fitness is associated with lower anger and anxiety

Exercise is good, everyone knows. The problem is advising people to exercise doesn't work and doesn't scale. Gyms are for people who have plenty of intrinsic motivation and money and time.

To improve physical activity at the population scale and over a lifetime, it literally has to be built into the design of the cities, so people get enough exercise while walking to work or grabbing groceries.

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/activity-inequality...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUlgSRn6e0&ab_channel=NotJu...

This study seems both wildly underpowered, chooses relatively bad methods for analysis (splitting between below average and above average, really?) and has far too many comparisions (they claim to have used bonferroni corrections where necessary, and then don't mention it again).

All in all, it's a pretty good example of modern psychological research. Bad statistics, hyped up findings and (probably) wild over-generalisation about what this tiny study means for society/the world/my research funding.

I think the biggest flaw here is around the measurement of VO2 max. So they first ask people how often they exercise (cos no-one ever lies) and then use a linear equation to map that to VO2 max. Granted, the equation has lines for age and sex, so it's not entirely useless, but if you're only going to sample 40 students then why not try to measure things a little better?

The most unintentionally hilarious thing about their methods section is that age was not normally distributed (according to a shapiro test). They sampled students, so of course it's not going to be normally distributed. Students have a well-known bias in age.

Ultimately, regardless of whether or not this finding turns out to be true (I like the idea of it, myself) this study provides absolutely no evidence for the effect.

Note: I have a PhD in psychology, but left the field a decade plus ago. I'm both horrified by this study, and also having a lot of fun poking holes in it, maybe I should try to get back into reviewing? ;)

I am pretty confident from my own experience that the study’s conclusion is broadly true. But the study leaves open one obvious alternative explanation: people who have enough free time to exercise regularly (and exercise was used as a stand-in for fitness level, it doesn’t look like they actually measured anything else) could have less stressful and anger-inducing lives overall.

read¹ the book "Spark" and a school instituted a daily exercise program. Kids were happier, fought less and got better grades.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316113514

[1] well, listened to the audiobook while walking

Linguistics question: the title says “[…] is associated with lower anger and anxiety” I read it as _people who have lower anger, and people who have anxiety_ Am I broken? (I am a native English speaker but that doesn’t mean that I speak English correctly)

My final year of college I lived 2 miles off campus and would daily bicycle to school. In previous years I would commute via car as I lived too far to make the trip conveniently. I perceived greater emotional well-being during the 1 year period of moderate daily exercise. My grades also improved dramatically and I was more resilient during periods of sleep deprivation or intense study. As an adult with a family it has been more difficult to establish a pattern of daily physical activity. Going to the gym is very boring for me.

Related:

Exercise may relieve depression as effectively as antidepressants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46541672 - January 2026

Exercise twice as effective as anti-depressants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39396047 - February 2024

Running from the Pain (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27306725 - May 2021

Running from the Pain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16573009 - March 2018

Fitness or the exercise to get there?

Cardio is unpleasant and stressful, which is why most people don't do it. Someone willing to do something that is not fun, on a regular basis, is going to have stronger mental status that someone who doesn't try at all.

As Calvin's dad says, misery builds character.

sample size and methods do not inspire confidence about such broad generalizations

I am 100% certain my resilience to stress and anxiety is directly tied to my cardiovascular health. I'm prone to a heart-racing, hot-eared flywheel of anxiety. When I've been running a lot I can FEEL the vagal tone/HRV fitness that gives me an physical off ramp for the mental space to take a fucking chill pill.

I wonder if there is some underlying lizard-brain thing going on here.

If you "know" you are physically unfit you are quick to anger and aggression because you potentially need to act like that to not need to rely on physical fitness if it came to needing it? I.e. you need to deter others through your aggression rather than relying on fitness if it came to a fight?

Or alternatively the other perspective if you "know" you are fit you can keep the stress hormones low safe in the knowledge that if it comes to it you've got the fitness to handle a fight?

...Or perhaps none of that!

Interesting.

"Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands. They just don't."

Would a stressed out Amazon/Uber eats delivery person who is very fit from working 10 hours a day, but with barely enough money to feed their family going to be less angry/anxious than a rich person lounging at his villa with zero worries? This is looking at one variable which isn't very useful.