Goal Conflict as a Barrier to Regular Physical Activity

Dan Bailis -SRG 2007

Français

2009

Most people who adopt the goal of improving physical activity do not succeed. The aim of this research is to examine goal conflict as a uniquely contributing factor to the low rate of success. To date, the research has involved the screening of about 1,000 undergraduates with high exercise motivation into a series of laboratory experiments. In our typical experiment, after making a commitment to exercise, students are randomly assigned to conditions that prompt them to think about either their conflicting academic goals, or their consistent exercise goals. Follow-up measures of the students’ mood, motivation/intentions, and exercise behaviour permit us to test the effects of this brief exposure to goal conflict, while holding other factors constant.

Preliminary experiments and those conducted in the first year of this grant showed that goal conflict can create a barrier to regular physical activity in several ways: by (a) lowering the amount of exercise that is performed up to 1 week later, (b) preventing intrinsic enjoyment
of exercise, and (c) conditioning negative emotions to exercise-related objects and settings. These studies (now under peer review) found no evidence that goal conflict lowers participants' attitudes or intentions to exercise: instead, it prevents them from acting on their intentions.

Experiments in the second year considered goal conflict in the broader context of excuses
for non-adherence to exercise, and personal factors and interventions that might counteract
goal-conflict effects. The excuse-making research formed the basis of a successful Master’s thesis and new collaboration with researchers who are including exercise prescriptions in an online treatment program for patients with insomnia. Building on our previous findings that goal conflict lowers state self-esteem and arouses feelings of shame and distress, another experiment used a computerized word-recognition task to measure how quickly participants could distinguish words that were self-relevant (e.g., me, myself, mine) or neutral (e.g., up, theory, drop) from non-word foils (e.g,. ke, nztemg, tagn). Participants in the goal-conflict condition were slower than controls at recognizing just the self-relevant words. This finding suggests that goal-conflict may interfere, at a pre-conscious level, with individuals’ willingness or ability to focus their attention on themselves.

Our research in the third year will continue to investigate interventions. One planned study will develop a measure of chronic goal conflict in the exercise domain and compare the effects
of positively and negatively framed exercise-promotion messages between high- and low-scoring individuals on this new measure. Another study will evaluate a video intervention that
we developed previously for students, countering the perception that exercise poses a risk
to academic learning and performance.

Two practical implications of this research are already clear. The first is that poor adherence
to exercise has psychological causes and remedies apart from individuals’ knowledge of health-related risk, or other sources of motivation toward exercise, which are still the main targets
of interventions in this field. The second is that goal conflict is likely to be fueled by a social organization of exercise that keeps it separate from (and therefore apparently costly to) individuals’ other goal pursuits. To address goal conflict, public policies and promotional messages can shift toward the notion of sustainably integrating exercise with other pursuits.

 

2008

Most people who adopt the goal of improving physical activity do not succeed. Among 5000+ students surveyed at University of Manitoba, 40% rated increasing physical activity as their most important health goal. Of this 40%, 681 students participated in a series of 8 laboratory experiments. The aim of these experiments was to compare short-term changes in exercise behaviour, emotions, and motivation of students who were either exposed or unexposed to goal conflict, by being reminded of their academic goals.

Preliminary findings suggest goal conflict can create a barrier to physical activity by (a) lowering intrinsic enjoyment of subsequent exercise and (b) conditioning negative emotions to exercise-related objects and settings. No evidence suggests that goal conflict lowers participants' attitudes or intentions to exercise. Thus, apparently, goal conflict prevents participants from acting on their intentions, while leaving exercise motivation intact.

These findings have implications for policymakers, practitioners, and future research. Policymakers can shift public service messages about exercise away from the notion of health benefits (which speaks to a motivational concern) and toward the notion that exercise can facilitate other pursuits (which speaks to a different concern: i.e., that of translating motivation into action). Policymakers also can create new incentives and/or infrastructure for the combined pursuit of exercise and other goals.

Physical educators and medical/allied health professionals can play an important role in helping people to manage goal conflict. Alongside teaching of sport-skills, physical education can include teaching of life-skills, informed by psychological knowledge of choice and decision-making. Exercise prescriptions can include planning interventions that are likely to instill a sense of autonomy and forestall goal conflict surrounding exercise. Our future research will test additional mechanisms through which goal conflict obstructs physical activity, and will develop a video intervention for post-secondary students to promote integration of exercise with academic pursuits.

2007

Despite good intentions and repeated attempts, most who adopt the goal of improving physical
activity do not succeed. Concerned academics, professionals, and policy-makers have worked
to identify and modify psychological barriers to exercise, such as negative attitudes, unhealthy
social influences, and deficient areas of the self-concept. This research will consider competing
goals in this light.

Through a series of experiments, this research will compare the experience of exercise when
one is, or is not, made mindful of other goals. Daily life for many Canadians requires that they
divide their attention and motivational reserve among important and urgent goals in domains
such as work, maintaining a household, or family and close relationships. If success in exercise
is perceived to come at the expense of these other goals, further investment in exercise may
arouse self-critical thoughts and negative mood. These, in turn, may work against continuing to
exercise. Different experiments will test each facet of this hypothesis.

One practical implication will be tested also. When goal conflict is the reason for people's
faltering efforts, an intervention that shows how exercise can facilitate other pursuits is likely to
improve exercise adherence. It may do so more effectively than a standard intervention that
raises awareness of the health risks of inactivity.

In this research, academic success will serve as a model alternative goal to exercise. By
studying students who can be made mindful of their strong academic goals, I hope to learn
whether simultaneously thinking of exercise will result in less positive emotion, more negative
emotion, and lower self-esteem than these students would otherwise feel. By following some
students over time and exposing them to different messages about the value of exercise, I
anticipate learning more about how goal conflict affects the experience of exercise-related
settings and objects, and adherence to exercise goals.

SCRI 2007 Presentation Slides

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