The Interface between Psychological Stress, Motivation and Exercise

Dear Colleagues,

Physical activity and exercise are clearly beneficial for mental health and stress reduction, but it is now clear that the experience of stress, poor mood and negative affect is deleterious for physical activity behavior. Stults-Kolehmainen and Sinha (2014) found that a majority of research on the effects of stress on physical activity reported that the relationship was typically negative—greater stress resulted in less PA. However, a notable amount of research indicated that stress might result in the activation of physically active behaviors. This makes sense from the basic idea of stress as an energizing force and the notion of fight, flight and freeze.

No models of stress and physical activity sufficiently describe what factors predominately mediate or moderate this relationship. One possibility is that stress may influence processes of motivation related to PA and sedentary behaviors. New models of motivation for physical activity (e.g., Stults-Kolehmainen et al., 2020) may provide clues, but other motivational frameworks may also include pertinent factors, such as the Affect and Health Behavior Framework (Williams and Evans, 2014), the Affective–Reflective Model of Physical Inactivity and Exercise (Brand and Ekkekakis, 2018), and other dual-process models or theories of hedonic motivation (Williams and Bohlen, 2019).

This Special Issue offers an opportunity to publish high-quality multidisciplinary original research and reviews that focus on the intersection of stress, mental health and motivation in the promotion of physical activity and exercise. Research can target any age group and context or setting, such as leisure time, active commuting or the workplace, and in the form of structured exercise or unstructured activity and play. Investigators who have conducted research on these topics are invited to submit manuscripts for consideration for this Special Issue in IJERPH.

Dr. Matthew A. Stults-Kolehmainen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• stress
• mental health
• anxiety
• mood
• motivation
• motivation states
• urge
• desire
• physical activity
• exercise
• occupational activity
• sedentary behaviors