Category: Sport

Emotion, Sport

When we’re in a good mood, we’re more likely to engage in healthy behaviours

By Emily Reynolds

On some days, waking up and engaging in healthy behaviours is easy — you get up, hit the gym, drink enough water and spend time with friends. On others, even getting out of bed seems like too much effort.

Knowing how to encourage healthy behaviours is therefore pretty useful, and much research has been done on what makes them stick, whether that’s avoiding indulgent friends or paying to remove temptation. And a new study from a Kent State University team, published in Motivation and Emotion, finds that positive mood can also encourage healthy behaviour — at least in the short term.

Continue reading “When we’re in a good mood, we’re more likely to engage in healthy behaviours” →
Occupational, Sport

Stressful Days At Work Leave Us Less Likely To Exercise

By Emily Reynolds

After an incredibly stressful day of work, which are you more likely to do: walk several miles home, or get on a bus straight to your door? While the first option certainly comes with increased health benefits — including, potentially, decreased stress — many of us would choose the second anyway.

A new study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, seeks to understand why, even when we know how positive exercise can be, we often fail to be active after work. It could come down to how high-pressure your job is, according to Sascha Abdel Hadi from Justus-Liebig-University Giessen and team — and how much control you have over your work.

Continue reading “Stressful Days At Work Leave Us Less Likely To Exercise” →
Sport

How Much Do You Want To Exercise Right Now? Researchers Are Studying People’s In-The-Moment Motivation To Be Active

By Emma Young

Think back to the last time that you did some exercise. What exactly prompted you to get up and do it? Was it because it was scheduled? Or because you felt a strong urge to engage in some physical activity (or maybe a bit of both)?

Traditionally, researchers have explored a person’s general disposition to exercise, and looked at strategies to increase their exercise levels over a week, a month, or longer. However, a team led by Matt Stults-Kolehmainen at Yale University, Yale-New Haven Hospital and Columbia University argues in new work in Frontiers in Psychology that it’s also crucial to consider transient changes in in-the-moment wants, desires and urges for physical activity and also rest. “Typically, we understand motivation as a more stable construct – e.g. ‘I am not motivated today’ — or a trait — ‘I am not a motivated person’. This new perspective views motivation right now,” Stults-Kolehmainen says. And the team believes that by influencing these feelings, people can be encouraged to exercise more often.

Continue reading “How Much Do You Want To Exercise Right Now? Researchers Are Studying People’s In-The-Moment Motivation To Be Active” →
Coronavirus, Sleep and dreaming, Sport

Why Do Basketball Teams Have a Home-Court Advantage? Natural Experiment During Pandemic Provides Some Answers

By Emma Young

When the US National Basketball Association (NBA) was forced to pause the season due to Covid-19 on March 11 last year, the fans were naturally devastated. When the season resumed five months later, with the top 22 teams bubbled together and playing every game in Orlando, Florida, this was great news for the sport, and the fans — and a pair of US researchers. Andrew McHill at Oregon Health and Science University and Evan Chinoy at Leidos Inc, in San Diego, realised that the restart provided a perfect natural experiment to explore the effects of travel on play. Their study, published in Scientific Reports, reveals some insights into causes of the well-documented sporting home-side advantage.

Continue reading “Why Do Basketball Teams Have a Home-Court Advantage? Natural Experiment During Pandemic Provides Some Answers” →
Sport, Team work

People Love Winning Streaks By Individuals More Than Those By Teams

By Emily Reynolds

When Usain Bolt or Serena Williams step out for their latest race or match, the world waits with bated breath. As some of the best athletes in the world, their unbelievable winning streaks have been met by almost universal acclaim — and plenty of people hoping that streak isn’t broken.

But according to Jesse Walker from Ohio State University and Thomas Gilovich from Cornell University, that investment and goodwill just isn’t the same when it comes to teams: we’re far less impressed by consecutive wins by groups of people than those by individuals. They call this phenomenon the “Streaking Star Effect” in their new paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  

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Cognition, Sport

People May Only Notice They’ve Become More Active After More Frequent Vigorous — But Not Moderate — Physical Activity

By Emily Reynolds

Starting a new habit isn’t always easy — we probably only have to look at our own history of failed New Year’s Resolutions to know that. One common frustration is that things don’t happen fast enough — we start doing something that’s supposedly good for us but don’t see a significant behaviour change as quickly as we’d hoped.

That certainly seems to be the case with exercise, at least according to a new study in Frontiers in Psychology. It found that people only feel they’ve become more active when they increase the amount of vigorous activity they do —  if it’s moderate, they don’t feel like they’ve changed at all.

Continue reading “People May Only Notice They’ve Become More Active After More Frequent Vigorous — But Not Moderate — Physical Activity” →

Health, Social, Sport

Struggling To Stick To A Workout Routine? Copying Your Friends Might Help

By Emily Reynolds

Keeping to goals or new habits is not easy — so much so that there’s a cottage industry of life coaches, motivational speakers and stationery companies offering you tricks, hints, motivational journals and other products apparently designed to keep you on the straight and narrow.

But there might be an easier — and considerably cheaper — way of doing things. Rather than trying to motivate ourselves alone, Katie S. Mehr and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania argue in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, copying the strategies that our friends use may provide us with some much needed drive.

Continue reading “Struggling To Stick To A Workout Routine? Copying Your Friends Might Help” →

Cognition, Personality, Sport

Here’s How Long-Distance Runners Are Different From The Rest Of Us

By Emily Reynolds

For many, running a marathon is seen as the ultimate amateur athletic achievement; for others, it’s just the start. Ultramarathon runners often take on courses of incredibly impressive length, running 50 or 100 kilometres at one time or over several days.

Clearly this is physically demanding, and only those in seriously good shape will be able to take on such challenges — ultramarathon running involves stress on muscles and bones, blisters, dehydration, sleep deprivation and mental and physical fatigue, so it’s really not for the faint of heart.

But what about the psychological traits that make someone suitable for long-distance running? What kind of person can withstand this kind of physical stress, and how? A new study in the Australian Journal of Psychology takes a look. Continue reading “Here’s How Long-Distance Runners Are Different From The Rest Of Us” →

Cognition, Personality, Sport

Your Level Of “Planfulness” Could Determine How Often You Visit The Gym

Cycling Class at the Gym

By Matthew Warren

When a gym recently opened up near my house, I was determined to go regularly and make the most of the facilities. And I did — for about a month. But gradually, my visits became fewer and further between, until I realised I was paying for a bunch of machines and slabs of metal that I hadn’t touched in weeks. Guiltily, I cancelled my membership.

But perhaps I have my personality to blame. A new study tracking gym users has honed in one key factor that is related to how often they visit: their “planfulness”. This aspect of our personality, say the researchers, could be “uniquely useful” for predicting a range of goal-directed behaviours.

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Podcast, Sport

Episode 17: How To Make Running Less Painful And More Fun

GettyImages-958637750.jpgThis is Episode 17 of PsychCrunch, the podcast from the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, sponsored by Routledge Psychology. Download here.

Can psychology help make running more enjoyable? Our presenter Christian Jarrett speaks to several experts about various strategies including “cognitive reappraisal” and the benefits of taking part in organised runs. He also hears how some of us are genetically disposed to find running less enjoyable than others, and why that isn’t an excuse for giving up.

Our guests, in order of appearance, are: Dr Grace Giles (US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, Natick), Dr John Nezlek (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Faculty in Poznan and College of William & Mary, Williamsburg VA), Dr Marzena Cypryańska (SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw), and Professor Eco de Geus (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).

Episode credits: Presented and produced by Christian Jarrett. Mixing and editing Jeff Knowler. PsychCrunch theme music Catherine Loveday and Jeff Knowler. Art work Tim Grimshaw.

Key research mentioned in this episode:

Further background reading:

Check out this episode!

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Past episodes:

Episode one: Dating and Attraction
Episode two: Breaking Bad Habits
Episode three: How to Win an Argument
Episode four: The Psychology of Gift Giving
Episode five: How To Learn a New Language
Episode six: How To Be Sarcastic 😉
Episode seven: Use Psychology To Compete Like an Olympian.
Episode eight: Can We Trust Psychological Studies?
Episode nine: How To Get The Best From Your Team
Episode ten: How To Stop Procrastinating
Episode eleven: How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep
Episode twelve: How To Be Funnier
Episode thirteen: How to Study and Learn More Effectively
Episode fourteen: Psychological Tricks To Make Your Cooking Taste Better
Episode fifteen: Is Mindfulness A Panacea Or Overhyped And Potentially Problematic?
Bonus episode (sixteen): What’s It Like To Have No Mind’s Eye?

PsychCrunch is sponsored by Routledge Psychology.

PsychCrunch Banner April 16

Routledge interviewed PsychCrunch presenter Christian Jarrett about the aims of the podcast and engaging with the public about psychology research.