Acute aerobic exercise and affect - Current status, problems and prospectsregarding dose-response

One of the assumptions underlying recent physical activity recommendations is that lower doses of activity (i.e. intensity and duration) are more enjo yable for the average person, thus leading to higher involvement and adhere nce rates, However, the veracity of this hypothesis can be questioned, sinc e little is actually known regarding the association between activity doses and affective responses. The few preliminary attempts at the conceptual de lineation of the dose-response relationship, all centred around an 'inverte d-U' notion, are reviewed and criticised as lacking empirical foundation. A vailable meta-analyses, as well as the empirical literature on the role of exercise intensity and duration, are examined. Increased intensity appears to be associated with reduced positivity of aff ect during and immediately following an exercise bout. Intensity effects ap pear to be attenuated during recovery. Fitness and training status appear t o become significant mediators of the exercise-affect relationship only at high intensities. With intensity being kept constant, different exercise bo ut durations have not been shown to have a differential impact on pre- to p ost-exercise affective changes. Recommendations for future research include : (i) a shift from categorical to dimensional conceptualisations and operat ionalisations of affect; (ii) the examination of psychological theories on the association between activation and affect (e.g. extraversion-introversi on, sensation seeking, type A behaviour pattern and related self-evaluative tendencies, reversal theory, optimal stimulation theory, multidimensional activation theory and self-efficacy); (iii) the systematic and theory-based examination of in-task and post-exercise affective responses; (iv) the inc orporation of the parameter of fitness and/or activity status in research d esigns. and (v) the re-evaluation of methods for selecting exercise intensi ty levels.