“I just NEED to move…”: examining women’s passion for physical activity and its relationship with daily affect and vitality

摘要

Abstract Background Physical activity has been linked to well-being among women. One psychological perspective that can offer insights regarding this relationship is the Dualistic Model of Passion. The model posits that individuals can internalize a valued activity in an autonomous fashion, facilitating a harmonious passion, or in a controlled way, resulting in an obsessive passion. The overall purpose of this experience sampling study with physically active working mothers was to examine the influence of passion towards physical activity on daily positive and negative affect as well as more generally in terms of vitality. Method Sixty-three healthy and active middle-aged women participated in this study. The women attended a baseline session to complete a series of self-report questionnaires including The Passion Scale. Then, using the experience sampling method, the women responded to electronic questionnaires pertaining to their daily affect and physical activity engagement over a 14-day period. Subsequently they attended a second session during which levels of vitality were assessed. The data were analyzed using Hierarchical Linear Modeling and Analyses of Covariance. Results Sixty of the participants (95%) were passionate towards physical activity. Daily positive affect was higher and negative affect lower on days when the women engaged in their passion (i.e., physical activity). On these active days, associations between overall positive and negative affect and levels of harmonious or obsessive passion were in the expected directions, albeit not significant. Levels of harmonious and obsessive passion moderated the relationship between activity engagement and positive affect such that obsessively passionate women felt significantly worse on days when they were not active. Vitality was negatively associated with obsessive passion and positively with harmonious passion. Conclusions The findings were consistent with the Dualistic Model of Passion and they suggest avenues of future enquiry. In considering physical activity as a strategy to optimize women’s well-being, the internalization process of this activity (autonomous versus controlled) should be considered. Potential application of these results should involve facilitating more harmonious passions towards physical activity by emphasizing flexible and volitional participation that is well balanced among other activities.