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 physical exercise sessions. 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 physical exercise session, and whether these predictions influence the subjective experience of pleasure in a session. Here, based on the literature on reward prediction errors, we argue that running sessions that are experienced with a lower intensity of ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) than expected are associated with a higher level of pleasure, and vice versa. To test this hypothesis, we created a novel marker, the RPE-based prediction error, by comparing RPE before (prospective RPE) and after (retrospective RPE) each running session among participants in a start-to-run program (N = 66). Retrospective ratings of running pleasure was assessed by the participant after each running session of the program. Using this approach, linear mixed models showed that a positive RPE-based prediction error (lower score of retrospective RPE than prospective RPE) is associated with a higher level of retrospective pleasure. This study thus demonstrates that the use of prospective and retrospective RPE is beneficial for predicting the experience of running pleasure. We further discuss how future studies should help to better understand the impact of RPE-based prediction error on exercise pleasure and whether this new marker may be used to ultimately impact humans’ commitment to physical exercise.</p>
physical exercise, prospective thinking, rating of perceived exertion, pleasure, prediction error.
