The association between implicit attitudes toward physical activity and physical activity behaviour: a systematic review and correlational meta-analysis

Abstract

Within these models, explicit processes are described as less efficient and more intentional, controllable and consciously regulated than implicit processes (Bargh, 1994). These processes refer to facets of social-cognitive theories such as beliefs, expectations, intentions and the self-regulation of intention implementation (Rhodes, 2017). Implicit processes, on the contrary, are considered relatively more automatic (Bargh, 1994), such that their behavioral influences are presented as being more efficient, unintentional, uncontrollable, and less conscious than explicit processes (for a critical view of the distinction proposed here see:

Accounting for automatic processes in sleep health

“…spontaneous responses to stimuli as being 'good' or 'bad' that manifest in approach or avoidance tendencies) (Chen & Bargh, 1999;Rebar, 2017). Automatic evaluations have been linked with sleep-related behaviours such as physical activity (Chevance, Bernard, Chamberland, & Rebar, 2018), alcohol consumption (Payne, Govorun, & Arbuckle, 2008) and nicotine use (Spruyt et al, 2015).…”

Mechanisms of physical activity behavior change in an incentive-based intervention: Mediation analysis.

“…For example, theories should be developed that fully account for the 'explicit' and 'implicit' processes of behavior change, give consideration to the nuanced temporal structure of the behavior change process, incorporate a broader range of contextual influences (such as those listed in the previous section: potential novelty effects, the political context, perceived implementation limitations) and provide testable mechanisms for interventionists to investigate. Recent attention to the role of 'dual process' theories (Chevance et al, 2019), calls for stronger theorizing on temporal considerations in health psychology (Scholz, 2019), and for greater focus on context when developing interventions (Craig et al, 2018) are steps in the right direction.…”

“…Chamberland, & Rebar, 2019). Future studies should attempt to capture these processes by measuring implicit…”

I Can See It in Your Face. Affective Valuation of Exercise in More or Less Physically Active Individuals

“…Experimental studies provided evidence that heavy exercise intensity is oftenand severe exercise intensity is inevitably -associated with negative affect (e.g., Ekkekakis et al, 2011). Another new branch of investigation has begun to highlight the role of positive and negative automatic evaluations of exercise in exercise motivation (e.g., Rebar et al, 2016;Schinkoeth and Antoniewicz, 2017;Chevance et al, 2019).…”

“…Self-report methods have dominated the measurement of exercise-related reflective affective judgments (e.g., with the Feeling Scale, Hardy and Rejeski, 1989), and a few standard reaction time-based indirect tasks (mainly variants of the Implicit Association Test/IAT; Greenwald et al, 1998) were used for measuring automatic evaluations and associative processes. Although not all these reaction time-based measures reflect automatic processes in their purest form, they have become a method of choice in current exercise psychology research (Chevance et al, 2019).…”