Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology by Filho Edson;Basevitch Itay;

Author:Filho, Edson;Basevitch, Itay;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

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1 This scale is included in Table 13.1 due to its model use of psychometric evaluation methodology.

14

Affective Responses to Exercise

Panteleimon Ekkekakis and Mark E. Hartman

State of the Art

Investigations into how exercise influences the way people feel were the original seed that, over the past 50 years, led to what has become the prolific scientific field of exercise psychology. The overarching conclusion from this research, as echoed in contemporary textbooks, is that “exercise makes people feel better.” While there is compelling evidence that the exercise-induced “feel better” effect is indeed possible, there are also reasons to question the generalizability of this phenomenon. The main reason is the fact that few people are found to perform the minimum recommended amount of physical activity when activity is measured by mechanical devices rather than self-reports. For example, in the United States, fewer than 10% of the adult population participate in at least moderate-intensity physical activity for at least 150 minutes per week (Tucker et al., 2011). If exercise, in fact, made most people feel better, one would expect a higher level of participation.

This apparent inconsistency prompted a relaunch of research into how exercise makes people feel in the last two decades. Most early studies involved one assessment of a small sample of distinct constructs, such as state anxiety or certain components of mood (e.g., tension, depression, anger, fatigue, vigor) before the start of a session of exercise (typically performed at a “midrange” intensity, such as 60% to 70% of maximal heart rate) and one or more additional assessments after the end of the session. Especially when the participants are young, healthy, active, and physically fit college students, this methodology reliably yields postexercise scores that are more positive than the pre-exercise ones (e.g., Ensari et al., 2015; Reed & Ones, 2006). While this general methodology was used in hundreds of studies and evidently seemed uncontroversial for decades, a critical reconsideration of its various aspects uncovered possible problems (see Ekkekakis et al., 2019). Contemporary research examining affective responses to exercise and physical activity is based on a new methodological platform, characterized by the following innovations.

First, the target construct has been identified as core affect, the primordial component of consciousness that characterizes all valenced (pleasant or unpleasant) states, including emotions and moods (Ekkekakis, 2013). The content domain of core affect is defined by two orthogonal and bipolar dimensions, namely affective valence (pleasure vs. displeasure) and perceived activation (high vs. low). Thus, major variants of core affect include such states as energy and excitement (pleasant high activation), tension and nervousness (unpleasant high activation), calmness and relaxation (pleasant low activation), and tiredness and lethargy (unpleasant low activation).

Second, because core affect is theorized to be closely tied to homeostatic regulation and the physiological condition of the body, a bout of exercise can be reasonably expected to entail dynamic changes in the dimensions of valence and activation. Therefore, rating scales of valence and activation are administered not just before and after exercise but repeatedly, before, during, and after the

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