What is “exercise psychology”? Exploring physical activity, exercise
and fitnessExercise psychology emerged as a distinct field of academic study in the 1980s (Fox,
2001). According to Buckworth and Dishman (2002), this discipline explores “the brain
and behaviour in physical activity and exercise settings” (p. 17). Although research on
the correlates of physical activity has a long if chequered history, it is only since the late
1980s that exercise psychology became an accepted sub-discipline of sport psychology.
More precisely, in 1988 the Journal of Sport Psychology was renamed the Journal of
Sport and Exercise Psychology (Gill, 1987; my emphasis) in recognition of the
emergence of a distinct field of research pertaining to physical activity, exercise and
fitness. Not surprisingly, this change heralded the official arrival of “exercise” as a
scientifically respectable construct for research psychologists. More importantly, it
showed that the traditional goal of the discipline of sport psychology—namely,
performance enhancement in athletes (see also Chapter 1)—had expanded to include a
concern for the promotion of exercise behaviour in the general population. In summary,
whereas the traditional focus of sport and exercise psychology was on performance
enhancement, there has been an upsurge of interest since the late 1980s in the relationship
between people’s participation in exercise and their health and well-being (Singer and
Burke, 2002).
Although exercise psychology is a relatively new field, it has a venerable ancestry. To
illustrate, one of the progenitors of this field was Hippocrates, the Greek physician, who
emphasised the health benefits associated with regular physical activity. Influenced by
such ancient ideas as well as by subsequent developments in sport psychology, physical
education and sports medicine, exercise psychology is concerned broadly with two main
research questions. First, what are the psychological effects of exercise? Second, what
factors are associated with people’s participation in physical activity? This latter question
involves the study of the adoption, maintenance and consequences of exercise behaviour.
According to Fox (2001), the origin of these two seminal questions can be traced as
follows. The first of them arose mainly from curiosity about the scientific basis of the
“feel good” phenomenon whereby people who exercise regularly tend to experience
positive mood changes and an enhanced sense of well-being which they usually attribute
to the physical activity in question. The second objective of exercise psychology emerged
largely from a concern with certain health-related benefits of regular exercise.
Specifically, if exercise is associated with a reduced susceptibility to coronary heart
disease, obesity and high blood pressure, then how can people be persuaded to take up
and maintain the habit of taking exercise regularly? These twin aims of exercise
psychology will be addressed later in the chapter. Before doing so, however, some
conceptual clarification is necessary.
So far in this chapter, we have used the terms “physical activity” and “exercise”
synonymously. But there are important differences between these terms which need to be
elucidated. Perhaps most significantly, although exercise is a type of physical activity,
not all physical activity may be classified as exercise. In short, the construct of “physical
activity” is broader than that of “exercise”. Thus Caspersen (1985) defined physical
Does a healthy body always lead to a healthy mind? Exploring exercise psychology 215