EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY

EXERCISE, FITNESS, AND PERSONALITY

CHAPTER 4
 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Learners should be able to:
 
Explain the effects of personality type on exercise
and fitness.
Discuss and define running addiction
Explain personalities disorders associated with
exercise

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 THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY
 People differ in an unlimited variety of ways-from their physical structure to their
thoughts, feelings and behavioral patterns (Brody, 1988).

 Psychologist disagreed about whether consistencies of behavior, usually

referred to as traits, or situational factors were the primary determinants of
behavior.

 However, a point of synthesis as now been reached whereby most psychologist

consider both to be important.

 Learning gained through interaction with the environment (Dienstbier, 1984).

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 Potential mediators of personality change by Diestbier (1984).
 Associated with psychological changes concomitant with regular training.

 Related to one’s perception of physical changes accompanying exercise.

 The lifestyle changes that often accompany commitment to training.

 One’s expectations for changes. The more one believes that personality
changes will occur with training; the more likely they are to occur.

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 EXERCISE, FITNESS, AND PERSONALITY
Personality instruments

 The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

 The 16 Personality Factor Questionnaires (16 PFQ).

 The Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI)

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 THE EFFECT OF PERSONALITY TYPE ON EXERCISE & FITNESS
Type - A Behavior

Is of considerable interest and important to the exercise professional.

Two cardiologists involved a chronic sense of time urgency, an excess of competitive drive and easy aroused
hostility (Friedman & Roseman, 1974).

 The opposite of the Type-A behaviour pattern involved was called Type-B. Type-B individuals do not
exhibit the same degree of time urgency nor excessive competitiveness or free-floating hostility.

 The most important characteristic was believed to be the habitual sense of time urgency “hurry sickness”.

 It also included the need to quantitatively accumulate material objects, a basic insecurity of status, an
excess of aggression, impatiens with others and the tendency to try to do two or more things at once.

 Individuals showing Type-A behavior bear an increased risk of developing coronary heart disease
(Roskies, 1983).
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 Cont’d
Exercise and the Type-A behavior pattern

 To modified Type-A behavior through a variety of treatment

programs.

 Aerobic exercise as a way to reduce Type A behavior. Aerobic

exercise as a means of reducing cardiovascular risk among
healthy Type -A people.

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 Cont’d
Internal vs. External control of reinforcement

 Reinforcement is related on their own behavior or relatively

permanent personal characteristic, they believe in internal
control (Rotter, 1966).

 Reinforcement is perceived as unrelated to one’s actions. Its

occurrence will not increase expectancy for that reinforcement

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 Cont’d
Be more alert to aspects of the environment that will
provide useful information for future behaviors.
Take steps to improve one’s environmental condition.
Place greater value on reinforcement for skill or
achievement and
be generally more concerned with ability, and resist
attempts to influence one’s behavior (Rotter, 1966).

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 Cont’d
Exercise and locus of control

The theory of locus of control could be of considerable importance to exercise and fitness.

A person with an internal locus of control would be more likely to adopt exercise as regular
practice and would also tend to adhere to a fitness program better than an external person.

Example of internal locus of control, they tend to study alone and adopt exercise as a regular
practice.

Example external locus of control, they study in grouping and less adopt than internal locus
of control.

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 Cont’d
Personality hardiness

A personality style that enables effectively copes with potentially stressful situation with minimal
debilitating effects.

Hardiness consists of three traits by Gentry and Kobasa (1979):

 
 A sense of personal control over external events;
 a sense of involvement, commitment, and purpose in daily life;
 flexibility in adapting to unexpected changes by perceiving such changes as challenges or
opportunities for further growth).

The combination of these characteristics eases the potentially unhealthy effects of stress and
prevents the organismic strain that often leads to physical illness

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 Cont’d
Exercise & hardiness

 Exercise in connection with hardiness and its ability to reduce the illness-producing
effects of stress.

 Hardiness empowers a person to transform a stressful event by gaining information

about the event, acting firmly with regard to it, and Learning from the process.

 Exercise is not to alter stressful events themselves, but to reduce the mental and
physical strain that stress produces (Kobasa et al., 1982)

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 Cont’d
Running addiction

 Psychological and or physiological addiction to regular running that is

characterized by withdrawal symptoms after 24 to 36 hours without running
(Sachs, 1981).

 Similar forms of addiction could develop with other forms of aerobic exercise.

 The phenomenon has also been described as a ‘compulsion, dependence,

obsession, and as a healthy habit (Sachs & Pargman, 1984).

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 Cont’d
Two types of addiction cited by Morgan (1979):

Positive addiction. Exercise improves psychological and physical strength, and that the running is the hardest
but surest way to achieve a positive addiction (Glasser, 1976).
 
Five criteria for attaining a positive addiction:
 The activity must be something one chooses to do,
 It must have some value to the person,
 It must be something that the person can become proficient in and can do on his / her own,
 The activity must have sufficient worth for a person devote about an hour a day to it.
 The activity must have an inherent value for the person to continue long enough to become positively
addicted.
 
Negative addiction. Running may gradually move from being important and central to being controlling and
dominating.

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 Cont’d
The symptoms associated with negative addiction (Morgan, 1979).

Needing daily exercise to cope and believing that one cannot live without
running every day.
Experiencing withdrawal symptoms after a layoff and continue exercise when it
cause vocational, social and even medical problem.
Most telling with respect to a negative exercise addiction. For example, hard
core addicts persist in running despite tendinitis, stress fractures, and medical
advice to the contrary, often to the point that overuse injuries become crippling.
They also tend to give their daily runs higher priority than job, family, or friends.

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 Cont’d
Typology of commitment to running developed by Joseph and Robbins (1981).

Type 1: Running as the most important commitment (e.g., runs 40 miles or more each week and meets some
of the following criteria; keeps a log, runs intervals, races at least monthly, reads running literature weekly,
more than 50% friends are runners).

Type 2: Running as crucial commitment (e.g., runs 11 to 40 miles a week and meets some of the following
criteria; doesn’t taper during winter or bad weather, races occasionally, runs interval, maintains a log, reads
less than weekly, fewer than 50% of friends are runners).

Type 3: Running as a hobby (e.g., runs 11 to 40 miles a week but doesn’t exhibit as many of the associated
behaviors such as racing frequently, keeping a log, or running intervals).

Type 4: The occasional runner (e.g., usually runs less than twice a week, runs less 11 miles per week, tapers
in winter and bad weather).

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 PERSONALITY DISORDER
ASSOCIATED WITH EXERCISE
Hardworking, relax, avoidance from anxiety, depression, and
identity diffusion, feeling in control internal and external and
ability to master a difficult goal.

Excessive weight loss in runner may be attributable not to a

psychological problem but rather to an overzealous desire to
minimize body fat to reach performance levels (Smith, 1980)
 

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 Cont’d
The Athlete‘s Neurosis

 Excess of physical stamina, strength, and skill. Physical well-being in the form of
illness or injury.

 Anxiety, reactive depression, hypochondria somatic symptoms and panic attacks.

 They were virtually void of neurotic markers and outgoing and sociable before the
appearance of the illness or injury.
 
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 THE SELF-CONCEPT
 It can be interpreted as the totality of the individual’s thoughts and feelings with references to
himself as object (Rosenberg, 1979).

 Self-perceptions are formed through experience with and interpretations of one’s environment.
Self- perceptions are influenced especially by of significant others, reinforcements, and attributions
for one’s own behaviour (March & Shavelson, 1985).

 As an organization of ideas or a pattern of perception that represent the essence of one’s being
(Combs, 1971).

 People judge themselves against absolute standards, such as Olympic champion who has a
seemingly perfect figure, and relative standards, such as peers. People also judge themselves with
respect to perceived valuations of significant others

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 TRENDS IN EXERCISE AND PERSONALITY

 Interest is still quite strong in some of the special topical areas such as hardiness; Type A
behavior, and especially self-concept.

 A profile is developed for the dimension of psychosocial characteristics through self-

assessment (Gavin, 1988). The Psychosocial characteristic include Sociability, spontaneity,
Self-discipline, aggressiveness, concentration, and risk tolerance.
 
 The assessments rate strength, flexibility, and shape and analyze characteristics attitudes
and symbolic meanings of various areas of the body. The movement assessments rates
preferences regarding force, control, linearity, speed, and extension

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 REVIEW QUESTIONS
List down three (3) personality instruments questionnaires used
by the researchers.
What is Type -A behavior. Give one example of exercise that
can reduce Type A behavior.
Define running addiction. What are the criteria between positive
addiction and negative addiction.
Discuss four (4) typology of commitment to running developed
by Joseph and Robbins (1981).
Explain the Athlete’s Neurosis?

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