The influence of brief episodes of aerobic exercise activity, soothing music-nature scenes condition, and suggestion on coping with test-taking anxiety

Perceived Fitness Predicts Daily Coping Better Than Physical Activity

“…Our findings were consistent with other research examining the effects of perceived physical fitness on psychological health (Desharnais et al, 1993;King et al, 1989;Plante et al, 1996Plante et al, , 1997Plante et al, , 1998Plante et al, , 1999. However, the present study evaluated these variables on a daily basis, used a daily physical activity monitoring device, and specifically focused on coping with daily stress as the dependent measure.…”

“…These brief scales were found to be reliable and valid in previous research (Plante et al, 1996(Plante et al, , 1998(Plante et al, , 1999. These variables were measured using author-designed 1 O-point Likert scales (i.e., perceived stress measurements ranged from 1 [very relaxed] to 10 [very stressed], perceived coping measurements ranged from I [poor coping] to 10 [excellent coping], and perceived physical fitness measurements ranged from 1 boorfitness] to 10 [excellentfitness]).…”

“…These variables were measured using author-designed 1 O-point Likert scales (i.e., perceived stress measurements ranged from 1 [very relaxed] to 10 [very stressed], perceived coping measurements ranged from I [poor coping] to 10 [excellent coping], and perceived physical fitness measurements ranged from 1 boorfitness] to 10 [excellentfitness]). These brief scales were found to be reliable and valid in previous research (Plante et al, 1996(Plante et al, , 1998(Plante et al, , 1999. For example, the 10-point Likert scale item about perceived fitness is correlated (.71) with the Perceived Physical Fitness scale (Abadie, 1988;PIante et al, 1998).…”

“…To further understand how exercise leads to an improvement in psychological health, research to date has also suggested that many of the benefits of exercise may be at least partially due to expectancy effects (Abadie, 1988;Desharnais et al, 1993;Plante et al, 1996;Plante & Rodin, 1990;Solomon, 1984). For example, Desharnais et al randomly assigned 48 participants to either a 10-week exercise program with a manipulation of expectancy or an exercise program without the manipulation.…”

Music for anxiety? Meta-analysis of anxiety reduction in non-clinical samples

“…Once articles were added on the basis of the authors’ replies, the final set of articles retained ( k = 19) was subject to a thorough examination. As some publications (Plante, Marcotte, Manuel, & Willemsen, 1996; Smith & Morris, 1977) compared two different populations, in Table 1 they are considered to represent different studies. Some studies (e.g., Lai, Li, & Lee, 2011) provided several anxiety measures (e.g., cortisol, heart rate and mean blood pressure) and were therefore counted more than once in our meta-analysis (18 findings for self-reported anxiety, see Figure 2, and 20 findings for psychophysiological anxiety, see Figure 3).…”