Automatic affective processes

For some years now, we have been working with automatic affective processes (Ekkekakis & Brand, 2021). There are various methods that attempt to capture such unconscious processes. In addition to the widely used Implicit Association Task (Greenwald et al., 1998) and its variants, Fazio (1986) developed Evaluative Priming, which we have used in our field of work, adapted to the sporting context and developed further. Basically, subjects are asked to react to a target, e.g. a word or a picture, as quickly as possible by pressing a button and evaluating it as positive or negative. They were previously presented with a prime (e.g. a picture or word). The prime is only presented for a short period of time (e.g. 150 ms) or is also presented below the perception threshold (subliminal priming). The idea behind evaluative priming is that the prime activates equally valued memory contents through associations that are evoked by it. It can therefore be assumed that the reaction time is shorter if the prime and target trigger the same (positive or negative) affects. If this is the case, they are said to be congruent. On the other hand, the reaction time is longer if the prime and target trigger different affects, e.g. if the prime shown in the graphic - a bicycle - triggers a negative affect (possibly due to a previous fall) and the target (such as a laughing smiley in the graphic) is positive. This would mean that the prime and target are incongruent. If many trials of this type are carried out, it can be assumed that a priming effect can be calculated, from which it can in turn be concluded whether a (more) positive or (more) negative automatic affective process is present.

So far, we have compared runners with other athletes and non-athletes to find out whether the automatic affective processes are sport-specific and dependent on the frequency of sport practice.

Building on this, we looked at whether athletes who are primarily active in different sports (mountain biking and fitness sports) can be distinguished from each other.

In addition, we further developed a procedure that was carried out with children aged 8-10 years and whose physical activity behavior could be partially predicted by their (rather) positive or (rather) negative automatic process.