Sociodemographic precursors of explicit and implicit attitudes towards physical activity

In high-income countries, people with low socio-economic status (SES) engage in less leisure-time physical activity (PA) than those with higher SES. Beyond a materialistic account of this difference, the role of motivational precursors-among which attitudes are emblematic-remains poorly understood, particularly when it comes to dissociating the automatic vs. deliberative components of attitudes. This pre-registered study aimed to examine the associations between SES (i.e. income and educational attainment) and motivational precursors of PA (i.e. explicit and implicit attitudes), and whether gender and age may moderate these relationships.

We used data from 970 adults (64% of women; mean age = 33 ± 12 years) from the Attitudes, Identities, and Individual Differences (AIID) study.

Results of multiple linear regression analyses showed that participants with the highest level of income (>150,000$ per year) reported more positive explicit and implicit attitudes towards PA than those with lower income. Exploratory analysis further showed that women reported weaker explicit attitudes towards PA, while both explicit and implicit attitudes towards PA became weaker at age increases. In contrast, educational attainment was not significantly associated with those attitudes, and there was only mixed evidence for a moderating role of participants' gender on the pattern of associations.

Our findings suggest that both the explicit and implicit attitudes towards PA may be socially patterned. Future intervention studies should examine whether these attitudinal differences could be reduced, and whether such a reduction could help buffer the unequal participation in PA behaviors across social groups.