Predicting automaticity in exercise behaviour: the role of perceived behavioural control, affect, intention, action planning, and behaviour.
BACKGROUND
Habit formation has been proposed as a way to maintain behaviour over time.


OBJECTIVE
Recent evidence suggests that constructs additional to repeated performance may predict physical automaticity, but no research has yet explored possible direct impacts of intention, planning, affect, and perceived behavioural control (PBC) on automaticity.


METHODS
In a prospective study over a 2-week period amongst 406 undergraduate students (M age = 21.5 years [SD = 2.59], 27.4 % males), we investigated main and interaction effects of past exercise behaviour, PBC, intention, planning, and affect on exercise automaticity.


RESULTS
Results showed that - controlling for past behaviour - PBC, affect, and planning were significant and positive predictors of exercise automaticity. Decomposing a significant interaction between PBC and planning when to exercise revealed that planning became less predictive of exercise automaticity at higher levels of PBC.


CONCLUSIONS
Findings show that exercise automaticity is predicted by repeated performance and social-cognitive constructs. Further, interactions between social-cognitive predictors may be different for behavioural automaticity than for behavioural frequency.
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, g.j.debruijn@uva.nl.
Gert-Jan
GJ
de Bruijn
Benjamin
B
Gardner
Liesbeth
L
van Osch
Falko F
FF
Sniehotta
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001332:Automatism; D015331:Cohort Studies; D015444:Exercise / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006184:Habits; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010465:Perception; D011446:Prospective Studies; D013995:Time; D055815:Young Adult