Small Amounts of Physical Activity During the COVID-19 Pandemic May Contribute to Improve Empathy in Young Adults: An Observational Study

Decreases of direct face-to-face contact during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic would impair human empathy, an essential skill for maintaining relationships with others. Although physical activity amount relates to empathy, it remains unclear the effects of physical activity on empathy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four hundred and twenty-six college students' usual amounts of physical activity and sitting time were measured through monitoring from October to December 2020 with the questionnaire, and subjects were divided into active and inactive groups. Before and after monitoring, cognitive and affective empathy in subjects was evaluated with the questionnaire. Both cognitive and affective empathy scores were unchanged during monitoring in subjects. However, affective empathy's change rate in the inactive group was higher than that in the active group. Furthermore, affective empathy's change rate was negatively correlated with sitting time in inactive group subjects, implying that staying at home with a few amounts of physical activity would contribute to treating empathy in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.