Exercise might be good for me, but I don't feel good about it: do automatic associations predict exercise behavior?

Area of Science:

• Exercise Psychology
• Social Cognition
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Traditional exercise psychology models emphasize reflective processes for behavior change.
• Social cognition research highlights the role of automatic processes in information processing, as described by dual-process models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the significance of automatic processing in exercise psychology.
• To assess automatic evaluations of exercise stimuli using a priming task across different activity levels.

Main Methods:

• A priming task was employed to measure reaction times to exercise stimuli.
• Participants included physically active sport/exercise majors, active non-majors, and inactive students.
• Ordinal regression was used to predict reported exercise levels from priming task data.

Main Results:

• Physically active students exhibited faster responses to positive words following exercise primes.
• Inactive students demonstrated quicker responses to negative words after exercise primes.
• Priming task reaction times successfully predicted self-reported exercise amounts.

Conclusions:

• Automatic evaluations of exercise, particularly concerning its consequences, play a crucial role in exercise behavior.
• Dual-process models offer a valuable framework for understanding exercise psychology and behavior change.
• Findings underscore the interplay between automatic and reflective processes in maintaining physical activity.