Damien Brevers, Guillaume Martinent, İrem Tuğçe Öz, Olivier Desmedt, Bas de GeusPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"
<p>Humans have the ability to mentally project themselves into future events (prospective thinking) to promote the implementation of health-oriented behaviors, such as the planning of daily sessions of physical exercise. Nevertheless, it is currently unclear whether and how prospective thinking can assist individuals in generating future predictions about their own bodily states, such as when anticipating the level of perceived exertion to be experienced in a forthcoming session of physical exercise. Based on the literature on the rating of perceived exertion (RPE), we advance that assessing prospective thinking toward perceived exertion (prospective RPE) should inform on the remembered level of pleasure that was experienced by an individual during physical exercise (retrospective pleasure). We aim to examine this research question by using ecological momentary assessment of perceived exertion to be filled out before (anticipatory RPE) and after (retrospective RPE, retrospective pleasure) each running session of a start-to-run program. By capitalizing on the core dynamic of reward prediction errors, we hypothesize that running sessions that are experienced with a lesser level of perceived exertion than anticipated (a positive RPE-based prediction error) should be associated with a higher level of retrospective pleasure following the session of physical exercise, and vice versa (higher score of retrospective RPE than prospective RPE; a negative RPE-based prediction error). The confirmation of this hypothesis will demonstrate that the use of prospective and retrospective RPE is beneficial for identifying sessions of physical exercise that lead to an increase (or decrease) in the experience of pleasure. This may ultimately impact future engagement and commitment to physical exercise.</p>
physical exercise, prospective thinking, rating of perceived exertion, pleasure, prediction error.