Marathon running may improve resilience and emotion-regulation skills.
Australian researchers examined the resilience and personality traits of ultra-marathon runners by comparing differences between 20 runners and 20 people who were not runners (controls). Self-report responses to surveys and physiological responses to a computerised emotion-regulation task were obtained. Compared to the control participants, the ultra-marathon runners showed higher resilience, greater likelihood of engaging in positive reappraisal to regulate emotions and smaller physiological responses to emotionally negative stimuli. This suggests that running may improve emotion regulation skills and resilience. Ultra-marathon runners were also found to be less extroverted than control participants in terms of expression of social warmth. The researchers suggested that while runners may be less included to form close social connections outside of running, other research suggests that marathon running itself can be a very social experience.
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12287
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