Exercise Might Be Good for Me, But I Don’t Feel Good About It: Do Automatic Associations Predict Exercise Behavior?

Abstract

Models employed in exercise psychology highlight the role of reflective processes for explaining behavior change. However, as discussed in social cognition literature, information-processing models also consider automatic processes (dual-process models). To examine the relevance of automatic processing in exercise psychology, we used a priming task to assess the automatic evaluations of exercise stimuli in physically active sport and exercise majors (n = 32), physically active nonsport majors (n = 31), and inactive students (n = 31). Results showed that physically active students responded faster to positive words after exercise primes, whereas inactive students responded more rapidly to negative words. Priming task reaction times were successfully used to predict reported amounts of exercise in an ordinal regression model. Findings were obtained only with experiential items reflecting negative and positive consequences of exercise. The results illustrate the potential importance of dual-process models in exercise psychology.

Explicit and implicit affiliation motives predict verbal and nonverbal social behavior in sports competition

“…Attempts have recently been made to illustrate the discriminant validity of indirect measures compared to questionnaires for the field of sports and ex ercise. For example, with a version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) it could be shown that physically active students responded faster to positive words associ ated with exercise than physically inactive students did (Bluemke, Brand, Schweizer, & Kahlert, 2010). This illustrated that active students' spontaneous association with sports and exercise was more positive.…”

Affective–Reflective Theory of physical inactivity and exercise

“…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.…”

“…According to Fazio (2001) The automatic evaluation effect has been unequivocally established in experimental social psychology (De Houwer & Hermans, 2001). Only a few years ago, researchers in exercise psychology started to apply this idea in their research, exploring correlations between automatic evaluations and exercise behavior (e. g., Bluemke, Brand, Schweizer, & Kahlert, 2010;Calitri, Lowe, Eves, & Bennett, 2009).…”

Intended and Unintended Reverberation of Traditional and Pro‐age Commercials as a Function of Viewer Age

“…Exposure to models should exclusively become evident with an affective priming task that targets specifically at appearance-based self-esteem, but not global self-esteem. Hence, we suggest that appearance-based affect must be tapped specifically by attractiveness-related target words, whereas generic target words cannot assess the relevant affect (Bluemke, Brand, Schweizer, & Kahlert, 2010;Gurari et al, 2006). 4 H3:…”

“…Our findings feed into calls to attend to the crucial role that stimuli play in implicit measures (cf. Bluemke et al, 2010;Bluemke & Friese, 2006, 2012Degner & Wentura, 2009;Wentura & Degner, 2010a).…”