Motivational and emotional effects of social comparison in sports

The comparison to other athletes and the resulting effects on emotion, motivation and effort investment are a natural and integral part of sports performance. The current study tested a bias toward upward comparison in athletes. Further it tested how comparison processes influence motivation (i.e., self-improvement motivation, coasting, disengagement), emotion (e.g. happiness and shame) and performance improvement as a behavioral measure of effort. Freshmen from an elite sport university volunteered to participate in an experience sampling study conducted over one semester (6 months). Contrary to our predictions, athletes did not generally compare more upward than downward, and only few subscales of the two sport-specific dispositional measures (sport-specific achievement motivation and sport orientation) predicted upward comparison. As hypothesized, upward comparison to moderately better standards was associated with greater motivation while extreme upward comparison was related to a drop in motivation and increased disengagement. Still, upward comparison during the semester significantly predicted performance at the end of the semester. Downward comparison was related to coasting motivation and lower levels of performance. Happiness decreased with upward and increased with downward comparison. The opposite was true for feelings of shame. This research emphasizes the role of the social environment in sports and how training partners depending on their inferiority or superiority can boost or hinder motivation and performance in athletes.     

Affect and public health – Choreographing atmospheres of movement and participation

Attempts at improving physical activity rates among the population are central to many government, public health, and third sector approaches to encouraging health behaviours. However, to date there has been little attempt by public health to embrace different theoretical-methodological approaches, relying instead upon largely quantitative techniques. This paper argues that through a development of a framework of affect amplification, public health approaches to physical activity should incorporate the choreographing of spaces of movement. Drawing on two case studies, both incorporating ethnographic methodologies, this paper complicates the idea that public health can rely on individual or population level approaches that overlook affective and spatial entanglements. This paper concludes by outlining offer a series of ideas to encourage physical activity participation.     

Women's exercise identity increases after a 16-week exercise RCT and is linked to behavior maintenance at follow-up

BackgroundRegular exercise is critical for disease prevention, but adherence to public health guidelines is poor. Exercise identity is purported to be associated with exercise behavior maintenance, but the extant literature is largely cross-sectional and of low/modest quality.PurposeTo examine change in exercise identity after completion of a supervised exercise intervention, as well as associations between change in exercise identity and exercise maintenance at 6-months follow-up.MethodsN = 276 insufficiently physically active women were randomized to a 16-week, supervised exercise training intervention with 4 conditions fully crossed on intensity (vigorous/moderate) and duration (long/short). Exercise identity was measured pre- and post-intervention and assessments of exercise motivation and behavior frequency were collected at 6-months post-intervention follow-up.ResultsOn average, participants experienced a statistically significant change in exercise identity over the course of the intervention, t (128) = 7.94, p < .001, but identity change scores did not differ across training conditions, p = .91. Identity change was significantly positively related to changes in other theory-informed, motivation-based determinants of exercise, and predicted an additional 16.17 min of exercise per week, on average, at follow-up, b = 16.76, t (103) = 2.30, p = .023.ConclusionsParticipants experienced increased self-identification with exercise after 16-weeks of training, but training volume did not influence the amount of identity change. As expected, greater change in exercise identity was associated with higher levels of exercise behavior at 6-months post-intervention follow-up (ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT02032628 ).     

Queer affordances of care in suburban public libraries

Public libraries are more than the materiality of their built form and collections. Within ever-widening mandates to enhance social inclusion and citizen emotional and physical well-being through micro-political practices of care, this paper addresses the resourceful community resilience that insider activist and ally librarians may foster for LGBTQ + suburbanites. Turning its attention to Canadian suburban public libraries in three case study peripheral municipalities (Mississauga, Brampton, and Ajax) in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), this paper draws on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with librarians to identify affordances of care selectively available for sexual and gender minorities. Following its original usage in psychology of perception scholarship, affordances are understood as the perceived differential, functional, and relational possibilities of objects, places, and people for action. The range of affordances of care discussed in this paper include: LGBTQ + -positive space iconography; LGBTQ + Pride book displays, reading lists, and book marks; and LGBTQ + book clubs, writing workshops, and story times. These empirical examples are used to explore the performative progressive limitations of suburban public libraries.     

The triadic model perspective for the study of adolescent motivated behavior

The triadic neural systems model is a heuristic tool, which was developed with the goal of providing a framework for neuroscience research into motivated behaviors. Unlike dual models that highlight dynamics between approach systems centered on striatal function and control systems centered on prefrontal cortex, the triadic model also includes an avoidance system, centered on amygdala-related circuits. A first application of this model has been to account for adolescent behavior.     

A model for personality at three levels

People differ. How and why they differ are the fundamental questions for personality psychologists. In this article we address three levels at which people differ: within individuals, between individuals, and between groups of individuals. A dynamic model of personality is considered where traits are seen as rates of change in states in response to environmental cues. Within individuals, motivational and behavioral states show inertial properties and lead to an analysis of rates of change and latencies of behavior. Between individuals, the analysis is one of frequency and duration of choices. When individuals self select into groups reflecting shared interests and abilities, the structure of these group differences reflects the consequences of the self selection. Examples of the dynamic model are given for each level of analysis.