Motive Types Relations with Emotional Valence During Physical Activities

Literature reviews is assume that during physical activity occurs positive emotional changes. However, statistics on population physical activity habits indicate that only a small proportion of society engage in physical activity. As the reason is mentioned a lack of motivation. The research question of the present study is whether the motivation to engage in physical activity is related with emotional changes during physical activity? 50 voluntary participants, aged 20 to 59 years, took part in the study. The data were collected by both subjective and objective research methods. Motivation was measured by Motives for Physical Activity Measure- Revised scale (MPAM-R, 1997). Vitality or subjective wellbeing was measured by the Subjective Vitality Scale (Subjective Vitality Scale, 1997). Emotional changes during physical activity were recorded using Face Reader 3.0. The results show that some aspects of motivation - competence, enjoyment and health is associated with positive emotional changes during physical activity. Vitality also is related to positive emotional changes and are able to predict a positive emotional change during physical activity. It is concluded that the motivation to engage in physical activity is related to emotional changes during physical activity. We also conclude that, in order to encourage people, engage in physical activity more regularly, it is important to develop methods for developing people's intrinsic motivation to engage in physical activity in order to gain more fun, and to develop competence. In contrast the focus on appearance will be less effective for building models of physically active behavior and developing the habits of regular physical activity.