Dropping Out or Keeping Up? Early-Dropouts, Late-Dropouts, and Maintainers Differ in Their Automatic Evaluations of Exercise Already before a 14-Week Exercise Course

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine how automatic evaluations of exercising (AEE) varied according to adherence to an exercise program. Eighty-eight participants (24.98 years ± 6.88; 51.1% female) completed a Brief-Implicit Association Task assessing their AEE, positive and negative associations to exercising at the beginning of a 3-month exercise program. Attendance data were collected for all participants and used in a cluster analysis of adherence patterns. Three different adherence patterns (52 maintainers, 16 early dropouts, 20 late dropouts; 40.91% overall dropouts) were detected using cluster analyses. Participants from these three clusters differed significantly with regard to their positive and negative associations to exercising before the first course meeting (ηp2 = 0.07). Discriminant function analyses revealed that positive associations to exercising was a particularly good discriminating factor. This is the first study to provide evidence of the differential impact of positive and negative associations on exercise behavior over the medium term. The findings contribute to theoretical understanding of evaluative processes from a dual-process perspective and may provide a basis for targeted interventions.

Behavioral and neural evidence of the rewarding value of exercise behaviors: A systematic review

“…Moreover, in an IAT task, results showed no significant associations between automatic affective reactions and the level of physical activity in the overall sample, but only among obese individuals (β = 0.25) [97]. Six studies also examined whether automatic affective reactions toward physical activity prospectively predict physical activity [26,[99][100][101][102][103]. Five of these studies showed that positive automatic affective reactions toward physical activity prospectively predict physical activity [26,[99][100][101][102], but the effects sizes were highly variables (see table 1).…”

“…Six studies also examined whether automatic affective reactions toward physical activity prospectively predict physical activity [26,[99][100][101][102][103]. Five of these studies showed that positive automatic affective reactions toward physical activity prospectively predict physical activity [26,[99][100][101][102], but the effects sizes were highly variables (see table 1). Using the Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT) [104], a variant of the IAT enabling the measurement of attitudes toward a specific target concept (e.g., physical activity only) rather than relative attitudes between two targets (physical activity vs. sedentary behaviors), Conroy et al [26] showed that automatic affective reactions toward physical activity positively predicted the number of daily steps over one week, above and beyond controlled processes (e.g., behavioral intentions, outcome expectations).…”

“…Using the same SC-IAT, Rebar et al [102] revealed that automatic affective reactions toward physical activity prospectively predicted the objectively measured level of physical activity over the next two weeks, above and beyond physical activity intentions. Furthermore, using an IAT contrasting stimuli associated with physical activity and sedentary behaviors, automatic affective reactions toward physical activity predicted adherence to a 14-week health and exercise course (d = 0.54) [99] and self-reported recreational physical activity six months after the end of a pulmonary rehabilitation program (d = 0.22) [100]. However, still using an IAT, a longitudinal study in endometrial cancer survivors did not demonstrate evidence supporting the fact that automatic affective reactions prospectively predicted daily minutes of exercise [103].…”

Affective–Reflective Theory of physical inactivity and exercise

“…A few exercise-related studies have exploited features of the IAT and investigated correlations between the two associative foci ("exercise" and "good" versus "exercise" and "bad") and exercise behavior (Antoniewicz&Brand, 2016a, 2016b. For example, the Antoniewicz and Brand study (2016b) showed that positive associations with exercise prospectively discriminated between adherers and nonadherers to a 14-week exercise course, whereas negative associations did not.…”

“…Likewise, there are several reports of positive correlations between automatic affective evaluations (we will use "evaluation" in all cases where this term was used in the original study) and self-reported exercise volume (Bluemke et al, 2010;Chevance, Caudroit, Romain, & Boiché, 2017), as well as one prospective longitudinal study, in which more positive automatic evaluations predicted objectively monitored attendance at an exercise course (Antoniewicz & Brand, 2016b). Antoniewicz and Brand (2016a) demonstrated that automatic affective evaluations are connected to an action impulse.…”