Habit formation and behaviour change

Within psychology, the term habit refers to a process whereby contexts prompt action automatically, through activation of mental context–action associations learned through prior performances. Habitual behavior is regulated by an impulsive process, and so can be elicited with minimal cognitive effort, awareness, control, or intention. When an initially goal-directed behavior becomes habitual, action initiation transfers from conscious motivational processes to context-cued impulse-driven mechanisms. Regulation of action becomes detached from motivational or volitional control. Upon encountering the associated context, the urge to enact the habitual behavior is spontaneously triggered and alternative behavioral responses become less cognitively accessible

Experimentally manipulated achievement goal state fluctuations regulate self-conscious emotional responses to feedback

Self-conscious emotions, such as pride and shame, have important implications for performance in competence pursuits. Emotions and motivation are strongly linked and it may be that achievement goals play a role in regulating self-conscious emotions. This study investigated the effects of between-person achievement goal orientations and within-person fluctuations in achievement goal states on pride and shame responses to feedback. Undergraduate students (N = 58) completed a 24-round game of Tetris. Before each round, scoring criteria prompts were provided to manipulate achievement goals and participants rated their goals. After each round, participants received experimentally manipulated feedback and rated their pride and shame. A set of hierarchical linear models revealed that performance achievement goal states moderated the effects of feedback on pride and shame at a within-person level. These results suggest coaches and teachers may be able to use contextual cues to influence motivation and selfconscious emotions of their athletes and students during competence pursuits

Progression of motivation models in exercise science: Where we have been and where we are heading

The aim of this chapter is to highlight four progressions in the theoretical approaches to motivational models in exercise science. Our aim is not to address the efficacy of any given theoretical approach, as the other chapters in this section of the book provide detail in that domain. Neither is the aim of this chapter to put forth a new model of physical activity motivation. Rather, our aim is to highlight how and why the field is changing. We start the chapter by describing that the theoretical perspective driving most physical activity motivation research has been expectancy‐value models originating from social, sport, and education psychology. Following that, we present our perspectives on how and why the field is being invigorated by “new” perspectives, which are really just a reinvigoration of old ideas that got lost in translation amongst exercise science across the years. These progressions of theory include consideration for how a person’s context can impact their motivation (ecological models), that motivation is not a static onceoff phenomenon (temporal dynamic models), that motivation encompasses automatic processes as well as deliberative beliefs and values (dual process models), and that there are processes and factors that determine whether intention translates into behavior (action control models)

Physical activity and mental health; it is more than just a prescription

Most mental health and physical activity research describes unidirectional causes of physical activity on mental health, and as a result, a strong evidence base is being established for the effectiveness of physical activity as a treatment for mental health issues. Given that the efficacy of physical activity prescriptions are entirely reliant on individuals’ behavioral engagement, the aim of this special issue is to draw attention to translational evidence relevant to mental health and physical activity. This issue encompasses findings from a wide array of study designs (e.g., reviews, qualitative investigations, correlations studies, trial descriptions, pilot trial findings) of populations from high, middle, and low-income countries with clinical and non-clinical mental health issues. The evidence illustrates that people with mental health issues have unique facilitators and barriers to physical activity that are not accounted for within behavior change theories or interventions for the general population. Within this issue, you will find evidence of how mental health issues impact physical activity behavior change processes as well as examples of how context and person factors may moderate physical activity intervention efficacy amongst these populations. Informed by this evidence, we are calling for future research to investigate acceptability, maintenance, scalability, and generalizability of physical activity interventions for people with mental health issues. This future research will need to account for the unique barriers and facilitators of the population, be theoretically sound, apply to unique contexts, and adapt to dynamic change processes (including engagement and maintenance). © 2017 Elsevier Lt

Habit formation and behavior change

Within psychology, the term habit is most often used to refer to a process whereby situations prompt action automatically, through activation of mental situation-action associations acquired through prior performances. Unlike consciously intended behavior, which proceeds via a cognitively effortful reflective processing system, behavior that is directed by habit is regulated by an impulsive processing system, and so can be elicited with minimal cognitive effort, awareness, control, or intention. The habit formation process involves a gradual transferral of action initiation from the conscious attentional or motivational processes involved in reflective processing, to external cuing mechanisms characteristic of impulsive processing. Behavior thus becomes detached from motivational or volitional control, freeing finite cognitive resources for unfamiliar or otherwise more demanding tasks. Upon encountering associated situations, habitual tendencies dominate action regulation, and alternative actions become less readily accessible

Affective responses to a multi-day, charity cycling event of people with depression and anxiety symptoms

Introduction: The feelings experienced during exercise are a major contributor of exercise motivation. It may be that because of a deregulation of the brain’s reward system, feelings experienced during exercise are unique for people experiencing depression and/or anxiety

Conceptualizing and defining the intention construct for future physical activity research

Intention has been an extremely important concept in physical activity theory and research but is complicated by a double-barreled definition of a decision to perform physical activity and the commitment to enact that decision. We put forth the hypothesis that these separate meanings have different measurement requirements, are situated in distinctly different intention-based models, and show discrete findings when explaining physical activity motives. © 2017 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Achievement motivation processes

The pursuit of competence is fundamental to physical activity, regardless of whether that activity occurs in organized competitive sport or in less structured leisure-time pursuits. People naturally strive to feel effective in their physical activities, but such competence can be pursued in a variety of ways with different consequences. Achievement motivation theories attempt to explain the processes that energize and orient these competence strivings. This chapter reviews the psychometric properties of measures used to assess the most common and relevant achievement motivation processes for people engaged in sport and exercise activities

Responsiveness to change of the psychological determinants and outcomes of physical activity and sedentary behavior

Part of the intrigue – and difficulty – in studying physical activity and sedentary behavior is their dynamic nature. People's movement can vary as a result of slow changing processes such as habit formation (Gardner & Rebar, 2018) or rapid fluctuations such as day-to-day contextual or motivational circumstances (Conroy, Maher, Elavsky, Hyde, & Doerksen, 2013; Dunton et al., 2014). Notably, our ability to investigate the dynamics of these behaviors and the associated determinants and outcomes is dependent on responsiveness to change of our use of measures (Hays & Hadorn, 1992). Typically, little evidence is provided that change in a measure validly reflects true change in the underlying construct; it can be easy to take this aspect of measurement validity for granted. The conception of this special issue was the result of our surprise (and concern regarding some of our own work) when the legendary Adrian Bauman casually mentioned during a presentation that the very popular short-form International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ; Craig et al., 2003) is not an appropriate measure for within-person change in behavior. The IPAQ is only valid for population-level surveillance (see Bauman et al., 2009). This special issue is designed to highlight two aspects of responsiveness of change amongst the field. First, this issue demonstrates researchers' responsiveness to investigating change in these behaviors and the associated determinants and outcomes thereof. Second, this issue represents a call to researchers to determine whether our measures truly are responsive to change. Within this special issue, there is a wide variety of represented populations, constructs, study designs, and practical implications; all tethered by the theme that they capture and/or describe change in physical activity and sedentary behavior and their associated psychological determinants or outcomes. The contributions to this issue highlight how dynamically rich the psychology of physical activity and sedentary behavior truly is and what advances are needed in our field to ensure our theories, measures, and studies of these processes truly are responsive to change

Do personalised e-mail invitations increase the response rates of breast cancer survivors invited to participate in a web-based behaviour change intervention? : a quasi-randomised 2-arm controlled trial

Background: Previous research has shown that the personalisation of study invitations improves response rates insurvey-based research. To examine if this finding extends to experimental studies, we examined the impact of personalised study invitation e-mails on the response rates of potentially eligible breast cancer survivors forparticipation in a 6 month randomised controlled trial testing the efficacy of a physical activity intervention. Methods: Potential participants (n = 344) were sent either a personalised email or a generic email. Results: Those sent the personalised email were 1.5 times (95 % CI = 1.18–1.93) more likely to respond than thosesent the generic email. Conclusion: These findings suggest that personalisation may be a useful and potentially powerful tool that can be utilised when recruiting participants into experimental studies in order to boost response rates