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.

中文翻译：

---

休闲散步调节冠状病毒大流行的认知和情感表征：在随机实验设计中使用认知-情感地图

为应对冠状病毒大流行，许多休闲活动受到限制，而步行已得到卫生当局的明确认可。我们调查了休闲步行如何影响个人对大流行的态度。我们使用认知-情感地图(CAM) 来衡量个人对冠状病毒大流行和相关问题的认知和情感态度。在一项随机对照实验中，我们要求（N = 66) 参与者在散步前后绘制 CAM。对照组的参与者在在家进行任何自我选择的活动之前和之后都绘制了 CAM。我们发现，步行会导致对大流行本身的负面评价，这可能是由于更强烈的反思，而在日常生活中，人们已经适应了它。在对 CAM 的进一步定性事后评估中，我们观察到除了电晕之外的负面概念在行走后消失了。我们得出结论，休闲散步对个人对冠状病毒大流行的认知和情感概念化具有复杂的影响。因此，这些影响的确切机制需要在未来的研究中进行检验。我们的研究还表明，CAM 是衡量健康心理学实验干预的有前途的工具。