Feeling fit and focusing on mastery: a 2002 study of women’s motivation to exercise
A 2002 questionnaire study of 261 female undergraduates in university physical activity classes asked which self-perceptions and goals go with intrinsic motivation for exercise. A 2016 TIME article on enjoying workouts cites the study as evidence that comparing yourself with others spoils a class.
What the study did and found
The paper is “The relationship of physical self-perceptions and goal orientations to intrinsic motivation for exercise” by Michael Boyd, Carol Weinmann and Zenong Yin, published in the Journal of Sport Behavior in March 2002 (Boyd et al., 2002).
The authors gave self-report questionnaires once to 261 female undergraduates in university physical activity classes. One significant canonical pattern emerged, led by perceived physical condition, with sport competence, strength and a task orientation contributing moderately and ego orientation adding nothing significant (Boyd et al., 2002).
Why it is cited
The one referring page recorded here is TIME’s April 2016 article “6 Ways to Trick Yourself Into Enjoying Your Next Workout”, which says that among 261 class-going women those who aimed to be the “best” in the class “enjoyed it less”.
The journal, the sample and the class setting match, but the abstract does not report that women who tried to be the best enjoyed class less, and a one-time survey cannot show cause, so TIME goes further than the study.
The study was a single round of self-report questionnaires in female undergraduates, so it shows associations, not which came first (Boyd et al., 2002).
Later reviews point the same way: a 2003 review of 98 studies linked task orientation with positive affect (Biddle et al., 2003), and a 2020 meta-analysis of 116 studies tied mastery-approach goals most strongly to intrinsic motivation (Lochbaum et al., 2020).
The topic today
WHO advises adults to do at least 150–300 minutes of moderate or 75–150 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week (World Health Organization, 2020). In 2022, 33.8% of women and 28.7% of men worldwide were insufficiently active (Strain et al., 2024).
For the current picture, see our explainer Feeling Fit and Enjoying Exercise: A 2002 Study of Women.