Causal effects of sedentary breaks on affective and cognitive parameters in daily life: a within-person encouragement design

Understanding the complex relationship between sedentary breaks, affective well-being and cognition in daily life is critical as modern lifestyles are increasingly characterized by sedentary behavior. Consequently, the World Health Organization, with its slogan “every move counts”, emphasizes a central public health goal: reducing daily time spent in sedentary behavior. Previous studies have provided evidence that short sedentary breaks are feasible to integrate into daily life and can improve affective and cognitive parameters. However, observational studies do not allow for causal interpretation. To overcome this limitation, we conducted the first empirical study that integrated the within-person encouragement approach to test the causal effects of short 3-min sedentary breaks on affective and cognitive parameters in daily life. The results suggest that brief sedentary breaks may have a beneficial impact on valence and energetic arousal. Moreover, our methodological approach powerfully demonstrated the possibility of moving towards causal effects in everyday life.