Acute Effects of Exercise on Risk-Taking: Different Responses in Males and Females

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years there has been great interest in the effects of exercise on cognition, but few have investigated whether physical activity influences risk-taking. Purpose: To investigate the effects of acute moderate to vigorous exercise on risky decision-making. Methods: Healthy (free of psychological or neurological conditions), recreationally active males and females (n = 20, 50% females, mean age = 22.4 years, sd = 2.48) performed either a 30-min bout of cycling at 50% to 60% of their maximal power output or watched a neutral film over the course of two laboratory visits (repeated measures, randomized crossover design). Following the interventions, participants completed computerized behavioral tasks: the Balloon-Analogue Risk Task (BART), the Risky Gains Task, and the STOP-IT task and provided saliva samples (pre and post) to measure changes in cortisol. Results: There was a significant interaction between sex and condition (p = .01, ηp 2 = .3) for one of the risk-taking outcomes of the BART (number of explosions). Females exploded fewer balloons post-exercise. Performance on the other tasks did not change significantly between conditions (all p > .05). Cortisol increased significantly following exercise and responses did not differ between males and females. Considering cortisol change post-exercise similarly resulted in a significant sex by condition interaction (p = .005, ηp 2 = .44), with males exploding more balloons and females exploding fewer post-exercise. Conclusion: Acute exercise appears to have differing effects on males and females. Exercise resulted in risk seeking in males and risk aversion in females as measured by the BART.