How Much Do You Want To Exercise Right Now? Researchers Are Studying People ’s In-The-Moment Motivation To Be Active

By Emma Young Think back to the last time that you did some exercise. What exactly prompted you to get up and do it? Was it because it was scheduled? Or because you felt a strong urge to engage in some physical activity (or maybe a bit of both)? Traditionally, researchers have explored a person’s general disposition to exercise, and looked at strategies to increase their exercise levels over a week, a month, or longer. However, a team led by Matt Stults-Kolehmainen at Yale University, Yale-New Haven Hospital and Columbia University argues in new work in Frontiers in Psychology that it’s also crucial to consider transient changes in in-the-moment wants, desires and urges for physical activity and also rest. “Typically, we understand motivation as a more stable construct – e.g. ‘I am not motivated today’ — or a trait — ‘I am not a motivated person’. This new perspective views motivation right now,” Stults-Kolehmainen says. And the team believes that by influencing these feelings, people can be encouraged to exercise more often. In initial work, published in 2020, the team explored the concept of considering motivational states for understanding why and when people exercise. In the new paper, they report on their creation of a new scale for assessing these states. Their CRAVE (Cravings for Rest and Volitional Energy Expenditures) scale was developed using a series of studies on students and adult participants. The final vers...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Sport Source Type: blogs