Purpose. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of 12-week aerobic exercises on self-esteem, social desirability and rate of mental health in male students of Payam Noor University (PNU). Basic procedures. For this reason we used male college students (n = 80, age = 22 ± 2. 1) who did not do any sport. They were randomly assigned to experimental (n = 40) and control (n = 40) groups, after having been selected via stratified random sampling among students of Ahvaz Payam Noor University. Also, to collect data there were implemented the Cooper test and the general health questionnaire of Goldberg (GHQ) and social desirability questionnaire of Crowne-Marlowe. Main findings. Statistical analysis showed that training like aerobic exercises is related to a significant improvement in mental health, self-esteem and social desirability because of favorable changes in some of physiological and psychological parameters. Conclusions. This study was of a semi-experimental type (pre-test, post-test). Data analyzed by Multivariate Analysis Of Variance (MANOVA) at p value ( p = 0.05) revealed that there were significant differences between experimental group and control group, in mental health, self-esteem and social desirability.