Abstract
The exercise psychology literature is replete with assertions that ‘exercise makes people feel better’. However, this appears to be inconsistent with the high prevalence of physical inactivity and drop-out rates. Recent empirical findings, based on a new methodological platform, have demonstrated that the exercise-affect relationship is complex, exhibiting both a dose-response pattern and substantial inter-individual variability. The Dual-Mode Theory was developed to (a) bridge mind-focused and body-focused approaches for explaining the exercise-affect relationship, (b) provide a fit to extant data by accounting for patterns of dose-response and inter-individual variability, and (c) be consistent with information from exercise physiology and emerging evidence on the neural basis of affect. Investigations based on the Dual-Mode Theory could inform the ongoing debate on the role of somatic influences in generating affective responses and guide interventions designed to improve the affective responses of exercisers. A selective review of phenomenological accounts that served as the philosophical basis of the theory supports the thesis that affect has a dual basis, being driven by cognition in many circumstances but by direct somatic cues when homeostasis is challenged.