A primer on the role of boredom in self-controlled sports and exercise behavior

Wolff, Wanja; Bieleke, Maik; Martarelli, Corinna S.; Danckert, James

doi:10.31234/osf.io/9jwx8

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 57 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Supporting the link between boredom and self-control, preliminary evidence outside the sporting context shows that boredom makes it more difficult to adhere to a goal and selfcontrol moderates how well people deal with these difficulties (Danckert, Boylan, Seli, & Scholer, 2020;Bieleke, Martarelli, & Wolff, 2010;Wolff, Martarelli, Schüler, & Bieleke, 2020). Surprisingly, although the relevance of boredom in the context of repetitive athletic training has been emphasized already in 1926 (Davies, 1926), research on boredom and self-control in sports is scarce (Wolff, Bieleke, Martarelli, & Danckert, 2020). We know of only one study that has assessed the link between both concepts in the sporting context: Wolff and colleagues showed that boredom and self-control combine into distinct latent personality profiles that are linked to the weekly amount of exercise (Wolff, Bieleke, Stähler, & Schüler, 2021): One profile was characterized by a combination of low boredom and high self-control and this was linked with more exercise.…”

Section: Boredom As An Overlooked Self-control Demandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-control in sports

Englert¹,

Pageaux²,

Wolff³

2021

Essentials of Exercise and Sport Psychology: An Open Access Textbook

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Imagine yourself walking to the gym in the rain after a long hard day at work. Picture yourself lifting heavy weights, even though you would prefer sitting on the sofa watching your favorite baseball team win a playoff match. This is just one sports-related example during which self-control processes enable us to keep striving for a desirable goal and suppress potentially tempting action alternatives. In general, "self-control refers to the capacity for altering one's own responses, especially to bring them into line with standards such as ideals, values, morals, and social expectations, and to support the pursuit of long-term goals" (Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2007, p. 351) 1 . However, self-control is not always applied effectively as, for instance, evidenced by the large number of gym dropouts every year (e.g., Englert & Rummel, 2016).In this chapter, we will discuss empirical findings that highlight the importance of selfcontrol for sports-related performance and we will introduce the theoretical accounts that try to explain why self-control sometimes appears to fail. Finally, we will discuss open research questions in order to improve our understanding of how self-control operates and why it is not applied at all times. Self-control and the Sensation of EffortResearch on self-control has a long tradition: Narcissus Ach conducted the first studies on self-control already in the beginning of the 20 th century (Ach, 1905(Ach, , 1935. In general, there is a common agreement amongst researchers that exerting control over the self can be a tiring and unpleasant experience. In the mid-20 th century, Hull already stated that impulses or response tendencies have a motivational strength, suggesting that in order to resist these tendencies one must invest some kind of effort or willpower (Hull, 1943). Thus, the application of self-control is intrinsically linked to the sensation of effort (e.g., Kurzban, 2016;Shenhav et al. 2017). This sensation commonly refers to "the particular feeling of that energy being exerted" and is associated with "a sensation of strain and labor, a feeling that intensifies the harder a person tries" (Preston & Wegner, 2009, p. 570). This feeling of work is associated with voluntary actions and provides crucial information for the judgement of personal actions (Preston & Wegner, 2009).

show abstract