Can walking enhance the effects of written emotional disclosure?

Participants will be randomised to one of three conditions, sitting (control treatment), walking on a treadmill (intervention treatment), and walking outside in an urban environment (intervention treatment). The study will be conducted face to face at the University of Auckland medical campus and will involve answering some questionnaires (demographics and mood) and then following a written emotional disclosure protocol (Pennebaker, 1997) with three writing sessions on the same day. Participants will be allocated to one of the three randomised conditions and perform the allocated behaviour (sitting control condition or walking on treadmill intervention condition, or walking outside intervention condition) during a 15 minute break between the first and second, and second and third writing sessions. There will be three writing sessions of 20 minutes each, which will be completed on a computer and will be based on standard written emotional disclosure instructions. Standard written emotional disclosure involves writing about one’s traumatic and upsetting experiences, delving into one's deepest thoughts, feelings, and emotions about the event, ideally not previously shared with others. It is typically performed for 20 minutes a day on three consecutive days, although it can be performed with all three sessions on one day (Symth et al., 2008), which will be done in this experiment. The 15 minute sitting or walking interventions will take place in the breaks between writing. Participants will be supervised by researchers to ensure that they follow instructions and, particularly for the urban walking condition, that they do not stop and talk to anyone or get lost. Participants will then be asked to complete another mood questionnaire after the final writing session administered on the computer using Qualitrics. They will be contacted by email after a 4 week follow up period to complete a final mood questionnaire remotely over Qualtrics. To support the blinding of condition, all participants will be asked to walk briefly on a treadmill right at the end of the procedure after the mood questionnaire and writing has been completed for the day. In this way, all participants will think they are in the walking group and this will reduce the risk of placebo effects. All participants will then be asked if they felt the walking was beneficial. Participants will be given a $30 voucher for taking part.