Introduction
In early 2020, Chinese residents experienced a nationwide COVID-19 epidemic that had an enormous negative impact on the mental health of the general public (Chang, Huang, Zhao, Ma, Sun, Shi, & Fan, 2020). A variety of psychological reactions emerged as workers were forced to delay their return to work, students could not attend school, and the general public was instructed to stay at home in a relatively confined space for an extended period. Such a situation will inevitably have a negative impact on the psychological state of residents and can easily lead to the development of negative emotions, including anxiety, depression, remorse, and anger, and may also produce hypochondriac, compulsive, or even stress-related physical symptoms, thereby affecting immune function.
Mood state is a weak, stable and long-lasting emotional state, that affects all of a person’s mental activity (Lazarus, 1994). It is not a specific experience related to a certain thing, but an emotional tendency that affects the nature of all human experiences, that is, an undirected diffuse emotional experience. Although scholars (Alpert, & Rosen, 1990) have sought to distinguish the concepts of mood state and emotion, some recent studies (Athanasou, 2019; Dergaa, Fessi, Chaabane, Souissi, & Hammouda, 2019) do not do so; thus, it can be considered that mood and emotion are very similar to each other to some extent. Boredom is a negative emotional experience caused by a lack of activity and loss of interest in daily life (Zhou, Wang, & Dong, 2012), and is characterized by unpleasant feelings, lack of stimulation and low physiological arousal (Danckert, & Allman, 2005). With the continuous improvement of material and cultural living standards, people’s demand for leisure time activities has increased correspondingly. If this demand is not met, then boredom will arise. However, during the COVID-19 epidemic, people were confined to their homes, and in addition to experiencing monotony and unchanging surroundings, they also had more free time; thus, the emotional experience of boredom became more common. According to a survey on the emotional state of Chinese and Americans conducted by the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, boredom was the most common emotional state of Chinese people during the epidemic. Tilburg et al. (2017) studied the difference between boredom and other negative experiences and pointed out that the lack of a sense of meaning and attention best distinguished boredom. Physical activity (e.g., push-ups and aerobics) involves the stretching of muscles against bones and the consumption of energy. It is a planned and repetitive physical activity that promotes health and improves sport skills (Xia, Ding, Zhuang & Chen, 2018).
Previous studies have shown that physical activity can promote individual cognitive function (Cox, O’Dwyer, Cook, Vetter, Cheng, Rooney, & O’Connor, 2016; Ekkekakis, 2003) and further play a positive role in promoting psychological state, improving mood and regulating emotions (Hyde, Maher, & Elavsky, 2013; Monteiro-Junior, Rodrigues, Campos, Flávia, & Machado, 2017; Mishra, & Klasnja, 2017). Regular participation in sports can cultivate positive emotions and dispel negtive emotions, and regardless of the duration of the exercise, it can effectively produce mood improvement (Crush, Frith, & Loprinzi, 2018). Even a one-time sports activity can have positive emotional benefits (Zhang, & Zhou, 2013). Zenko et al. (2016) tested a novel method for improving the affective experience of exercise, to further complete the research in this field. During the COVID-19 epidemic, the physical activity that the average resident could engage in was restricted to indoors, and it is unknown how much of an impact this home-based physical activity can have on the mood state. Although physical activity can directly affect mood state, there may be other variables that intervene between physical activity and mood state. This problem deserves further study and is of more practical significance in the context of sheltering in place during the epidemic. Tsapelas et al. (2009) suggest that individuals with a tendency to be bored have more negative emotions than other people. In addition, anxiety and depression, two negative emotions, are strongly correlated with boredom, and their clinical symptoms are very similar (Barbalet, 1999). Boredom also causes negative emotions such as anxiety and depression (Chen, 2016), which have a negative impact on people’s overall mental activity (Jin, Lu, Zhang, Zhang, Liu, & Li, 2016). Zhou Hao et al. (2012) find a significant correlation between boredom and individual behavior. They proposed an external coping strategy for boredom – making changes, that is, increasing the degree of novelty of stimuli and adjusting the difficulty of tasks to increase the sense of excitement and control, thus eliminating the state of boredom. Therefore, physical activity is an effective way to reduce individual boredom experience, and can improve the mood state, further playing a positive role in promoting the state of mind.
Based on previous research (Wen, & Ye, 2014), a mediating model diagram (see figure 1) was constructed to explore the mechanism affecting the mood state of people living at home. In this study, in which people confined to their homes during the epidemic period were taken as the subjects, the effect of the epidemic severity level on boredom and mood state were investigated and the effect of physical activity on mood state improvement and the mediating effect of boredom were discussed to provide a new perspective for the improvement of mood state in the general public.