Don’t stop focusing when it gets harder! The positive effects of focused attention on affective experience at high intensities

ABSTRACT

Experiencing negative affect during exercise partially explains high levels of physical inactivity. An important direction for research is to better understand how and why interindividual differences in affective experiences occur while exercising. The dual-mode theory suggests that the interaction of cognitive processes and interoceptive cues influence the affective response. Hence, attentional control in form of adopting an external or internal attentional focus could lead to different affective responses depending on intensity. This study examines possible interactions between self-selected running intensities and attentional focus on affect. Fifty-eight inexperienced runners (30.14 ± 9.19 years; 38% female) ran 9 × 3 min outdoors around a large pond. While running at three intensities, they were instructed to focus on their breathing, on the environment, or did not receive an instruction. Dependent measures were affect, heart rate, and speed. The results revealed a significant interaction between attentional focus and intensity on affect (p = .01, η²_p = .08). At subjectively perceived light intensity, participants’ affective outcomes benefit from non-focusing attention, whereas during hard intensity the opposite seems helpful: to focus on breathing or to the environment. These findings shed new light on the interaction of focusing attention and running intensity to improve the affective experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Running
• automatic control processes
• dual-mode theory
• focus of attention
• novices

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Meagan Lyell and Max Busch, who helped collecting the data of this study as part of their graduation thesis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Studies from the field of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology indicate that interoceptive cues, such as afferents from, for example, baroreceptors or chemoreceptors and interoceptors in muscles etc., reach areas of the brain linked to affective responses (Ekkekakis et al., 2004).

² LaCaille et al. (2004) have shown that an association group ran faster than a dissociation group.

³ The questionnaire is originally developed and validated as a German version and BSA stands for “Bewegungs- und Sportaktivitäts Fragebogen“, which means questionnaire for PA and exercise.

⁴ It has been suggested that a positive bias in affective responses occurs when asked about it afterwards. The affect is remembered more positively when the experience has to be classified in retrospect (e.g., Ekkekakis et al., 2011; Parfitt & Hughes, 2009).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.