Abstract
The aim of this study was to examine how automatic evaluations of exercising (AEE) varied according to adherence to an exercise program. Eighty-eight participants (24.98 years ± 6.88; 51.1% female) completed a Brief-Implicit Association Task assessing their AEE, positive and negative associations to exercising at the beginning of a 3-month exercise program. Attendance data were collected for all participants and used in a cluster analysis of adherence patterns. Three different adherence patterns (52 maintainers, 16 early dropouts, 20 late dropouts; 40.91% overall dropouts) were detected using cluster analyses. Participants from these three clusters differed significantly with regard to their positive and negative associations to exercising before the first course meeting ( = 0.07). Discriminant function analyses revealed that positive associations to exercising was a particularly good discriminating factor. This is the first study to provide evidence of the differential impact of positive and negative associations on exercise behavior over the medium term. The findings contribute to theoretical understanding of evaluative processes from a dual-process perspective and may provide a basis for targeted interventions.
Highlights
Automatic evaluations of exercising (AEE; i.e., the spontaneous associations of exercising with either positive or negative affect) are a fairly well-researched phenomenon (e.g., Bluemke et al, 2010; Antoniewicz and Brand, 2014)
Data from some participants were excluded from analysis because of problems understanding the instructions for the tests (n = 20), because participants had left the exercise program ahead of schedule for health reasons (n = 2), because they had an error rate of more than 20% in brief IAT (BIAT) sorting trials (n = 7) or because they reported before the program that they had little intention of finishing the program (n = 4)
analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that difference score (D-score) were similar for the three groups, F(2,85) = 0.57, p > 0.05, with early dropouts having the least positive AEE (Dscore = 0.40)
Summary
Automatic evaluations of exercising (AEE; i.e., the spontaneous associations of exercising with either positive or negative affect) are a fairly well-researched phenomenon (e.g., Bluemke et al, 2010; Antoniewicz and Brand, 2014). Most empirical research on AEE has focused on correlations between AEE and exercise volumes (Bluemke et al, 2010; Conroy et al, 2010), the predictive power of AEE in relation to proximal episodes of physical activity (e.g., step counts for 1 week, Conroy et al, 2010) or decisions about exercising (Antoniewicz and Brand, 2014; Brand and Schweizer, 2015). Non-adherence to exercise programs is a well documented phenomenon (e.g., Marcus et al, 2000). We think that research on the psychological variables that influence the behavioral decisions of maintainers and non-maintainers is crucial to designing and implementing successful exercise interventions
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