An exploration of conscious and unconscious expectancies about exercise

Abstract

The present study investigated people's conscious and unconscious expectancies about exercise. In the first stage of the study, a correlational analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between expectancies and exercise intention and readiness on direct and indirect assessment tasks. It was found that people who intended to exercise more often or were more ready to exercise generally have stronger positive and weaker negative expectancies on the direct assessment task than people who intended to exercise less often or were not as ready to exercise. On the indirect assessment task, people who were more ready to exercise had a stronger positive expectancy (faster reaction time) than people who were less ready to exercise. No other relationships between expectancies and exercise intention or readiness were significant on the indirect assessment task. The second stage of the study determined if the performance of affirmations would strengthen a person's positive expectancies about exercise as measured on the indited and direct assessment task. The performance of the energized and alone expectancies significantly influenced peoples' reaction time for related expectancies while the performance of the easy and convenient affirmation did not. It was also found that the performance of affirmations did not change the agreement rating of peoples' expectancies on the direct assessment task.