Associations between physical activity and core affects within and across days: a daily diary study

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Behavioral Science
• Health Science

Background:

• Understanding the interplay between daily physical activity and core affects is crucial for mental well-being.
• Previous research has explored these relationships, but the impact of measurement intervals requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the within-day relationship between physical activity and four core affects.
• To investigate whether evening core affects predict next-day physical activity.
• To determine if physical activity predicts next-day core affects.

Main Methods:

• 166 university students completed daily self-report measures of affect and physical activity for seven consecutive days.
• Bivariate unconditional latent curve models with structured residuals were employed.
• Analyses focused on within-day and across-day associations between core affects and physical activity.

Main Results:

• Physical activity showed positive within-day associations with pleasant-activated and pleasant-deactivated affects.
• A negative within-day association was observed between physical activity and unpleasant-deactivated affects.
• No statistically significant relationships were found between core affects and physical activity across consecutive days.

Conclusions:

• The measurement interval significantly influences the observed associations between core affects and physical activity.
• Immediate affective states appear linked to concurrent physical activity, but longer-term predictive relationships were not supported in this study.