Exercise, affect, and university students’ appraisals of academic events prior to the final examination period

Abstract

Objectives To assess whether exercise was associated with increased positive and decreased negative affect for university students during academically demanding times. Design Within-subjects daily diary study. Methods Fifty-nine university students completed the LTEQ [Godin, G., & Shephard, R.J. (1985). A simple method to assess exercise behavior in the community. Canadian Journal of Applied Sport Science, 10, 141–146], cognitive appraisals of daily events [Lazarus, R. S. (1999). Stress and emotion: A new synthesis. New York: Springer], and the PANAS [Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070] for 14 days immediately prior to the final examination period. Results Our hypotheses were partially supported as threat appraisals were significantly associated with decreased positive affect on days closer to the final examination period. Contrary, to our hypotheses exercise was not independently associated with increased positive and decreased negative affect. However, the interaction between exercise and day was significant as participants experienced increased positive affect during the last 3 days of data collection immediately preceding the final exam period. There was also a significant exercise by threat interaction with follow-up tests showing the exercise/negative affect relationship was significantly moderated by threat appraisals only when academic events were appraised as mildly threatening. Conclusions These findings suggest that exercise behavior might be an effective way for college students to cope with stress especially during academic demanding times.