Physical Activity and Negative Emotional States Among Female College Students: A Three-Wave Cross-Lagged Study

Drawing on embodied emotion theory, this study investigated the longitudinal interplay between physical activity and negative emotional states among female college students across three waves of assessment. Female college students from five universities in Jiangxi Province, China, were assessed at three-month intervals over six months, with 1321 participants completing all three measurement waves. Physical activity was measured using the Physical Activity Rating Scale-3 (PARS-3), whereas negative emotional states were assessed using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21). Descriptive statistics, correlation analyses, and common method bias testing were performed using SPSS 26.0, while observed-variable and latent-variable cross-lagged panel models, together with multi-group analyses, were conducted using Mplus 8.3. Physical activity was significantly and negatively correlated with negative emotional states across all three measurement occasions (r = −0.363 to −0.249, all p < 0.01). After accounting for autoregressive effects and within-wave correlations, higher physical activity at T1 was associated with lower negative emotional states at T2 (β = −0.102, p < 0.001), and higher physical activity at T2 was associated with lower negative emotional states at T3 (β = −0.185, p < 0.001). Conversely, higher negative emotional states at T1 were associated with lower physical activity at T2 (β = −0.131, p < 0.001), and higher negative emotional states at T2 were associated with lower physical activity at T3 (β = −0.153, p < 0.001). An additional latent-variable cross-lagged panel model, in which negative emotional states were represented as a latent construct indicated by depression, anxiety, and stress, yielded the same direction and statistical significance for all four cross-lagged associations, although the standardized coefficients differed modestly in magnitude. Multi-group analyses indicated that these cross-lagged associations did not differ significantly across family residence or academic year groups. Overall, the findings point to a bidirectional pattern of longitudinal associations between physical activity and negative emotional states among female college students, in line with the embodied emotion perspective that bodily activity and emotional experiences may be interconnected over time. University mental health initiatives may therefore consider addressing both physical activity and negative emotional states, while recognizing that their longitudinal association appears to be bidirectional.