Determinants of Regular Exercise:
A Pilot Intervention to Make Exercise More Pleasant

Talk Abstract:

When:	2 — 3:30 p.m. Friday,  March 28
Where:	Simmons Hall Room  138
Cost:	Free and Open to the Public

Regular exercise affords many positive effects on health, longevity, and well-being. 

Despite its many benefits, the majority of adults in the United States do not engage in sufficient levels of regular exercise, and most people who initiate a routine of regular exercise fail to maintain it over time. 

One intriguing hypothesis for the widespread lack of regular exercise is that many people experience exercise to be affectively unpleasant, and as a result are less likely to engage in it regularly. 

In this talk, Assistant Pscyhology Professor Austin Baldwin will discuss preliminary findings from a pilot intervention designed to modify people’s affective response to exercise and to make regular exercise more pleasant and satisfying.  Baldwin will also discuss the implications of these findings for the maintenance of regular exercise and for theoretical models of health behavior.

Brief Bio:

Austin Baldwin completed a B.S. in psychology at Brigham Young University (2000), and a Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Minnesota (2006). He spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Iowa City VA Medical Center and the University of Iowa.

At SMU, he directs the Health Behavior Lab where he and his students address theoretically-guided questions about how different psychosocial factors influence (a) decisions to engage in and maintain health behaviors and (b) health outcomes. This work cuts across different health domains, including questions that are specific to the initiation and maintenance of regular exercise.