Research Reports

Motivation Matters… But Type of Motivation Matters More

If you’re like me, or millions of people around the world, maintaining an exercise habit is not easy. Despite knowing how important it is to exercise, not only for physical health, but for mental health, I find myself finding excuses or just plain avoiding it at times. This is often followed by self-berating and social comparison, which may help me get to the gym for a few weeks but not for long. In graduate school, I wondered what factors were at play when I was able to consistently exercise — it seemed amazing to me that I would be able to go for months with a consistent schedule of exercise, but that I also could go for months avoiding it. This led me to conduct a research study investigating the factors associated with higher levels of exercise participation.

The Study

In a study of 35 men and 53 women, with ages ranging from 18 to 69, I examined the relationship between time spent exercising and motivations for exercise, symptoms of depression and anxiety, psychological flexibility, personality traits, and life satisfaction.

Motivation

A buzzword in the area of physical exercise is “motivation.” However, motivation is more nuanced than we give it credit for. Self-Determination Theory proposes a continuum that ranges from fully external motivation at one end to intrinsic motivation at the other. Along this continuum lie varying degrees of external motivation that vary in their level of autonomous regulation. That is, the continuum varies in the degree to which a behavior is self-endorsed and valued. Along this continuum, the theory identifies external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation, and intrinsic motivation.

Findings

The study found that the more that an individual’s exercise behavior is self-endorsed and valued, the greater their engagement in exercise activity. Intrinsic motivation was found to be most significantly associated with time spent exercising per week. However, most of us don’t find exercise enjoyable just for the activity itself. That is where identified, and integrated motivation come in.

These two types of motivation were also strongly correlated with time spent exercising. In practice, this means that the more that you find exercise behavior personally valuable or important, and the more assimilated this belief is in yourself, the more you are likely to exercise. This can look like valuing your health for the activities that it allows you to do, the relationships it allows you to engage in, or simply for the comfort in your body that it gives you to live a healthy life. When these factors are under consideration, exercise behavior follows.

Notably, introjected motivation is also positively correlated with levels of exercise behavior, but not as strongly as those motivations with a more internal locus. That is, exercising to avoid feelings of shame or to achieve feelings of pride may not be as effective in the long run as exercising for personal values as noted above. External motivation failed to correlate with exercise.

This raises questions regarding the idea that external rewards may increase an individual’s level of engagement in an activity, in this case, exercise. Individuals may set contingency plans in which they allow themselves rewards in the form of food, self-care activities, financial incentives, or others upon the contingency that they exercise.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that these reward systems may not increase exercise as expected. Rather, the more significant associations with identified, integrated, and intrinsic motivation suggest that values alignment and self-endorsement are more likely to be associated with higher levels of exercise. While external reward systems are often recommended for increasing motivation for physical exercise, according to this study it is likely more effective to engage in values-based exercise behavior and incorporate this behavior into your sense of self.

References:

Pelletier, L. G., Fortier, M. S., Vallerand, R. J., & Brière, N. M. (2001). Associations among perceived autonomy support, forms of self-regulation, and persistence: A prospective study. Motivation and Emotion, 25(4), 279–306. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014805132406