Attributions for Health‐Related Physical Activity

Tenets of Weiner's (1985, 1986 ) attribution theory were examined in the context of being active enough for health benefits, including associations between attributions, emotions, and future expectations. Participants completed questionnaires assessing activity, perceived success/failure to be active enough for health benefits, attributions, emotions, and future expectancy. Perception of being active enough for health benefits was associated with more internal, personally controllable, and stable attributions. Support was found for relationships between perceived outcome and emotions, but not for attributions and emotions. Finally, a positive relationship was found between stability of attributions and certainty of achieving similar future activity outcomes. Given the interest in promoting activity for health, examining attributions for being sufficiently active for health may be considered an important advance.