Choosing to engage and choosing to persist: The role of non-specific factors in health-promoting activities.

OBJECTIVE Non-specific factors play an important role in determining benefits from health-promoting activities. Previous studies have focussed on beneficial outcomes of motivation during engagement. There are two aims of this project. First, we investigated whether expectancy and intrinsic motivation influence people's decisions to engage with health-promoting activities in the first instance and then subsequently adhere to them. Second, we examined the effects of providing information on health-promoting activities as a method of influencing expectancy and intrinsic motivation. METHOD In two studies, participants were informed about a health-promoting activity (Study 1: A breathing exercise for well-being; Study 2: A gratitude exercise for smoking cessation) and told that it has either a 'known' or 'unknown' effectiveness. Participants were then given the opportunity to engage with the activity over the following days. Expectancy and intrinsic motivation were measured after reading the information and prior to engagement with the activity. Adherence to the activity was measured at follow-up. RESULTS In both studies, intrinsic motivation positively predicted willingness to engage with the activities as well as subsequent adherence. Expectancy predicted adherence in Study 1 and choices to engage in Study 2, but not after controlling for intrinsic motivation. Describing the gratitude exercise as having a known effectiveness in Study 2 enhanced motivation and adherence to the activity. CONCLUSIONS The non-specific benefit brought by intrinsic motivation plays an important role in choosing to engage with health-promoting activities as well as subsequent adherence. Our results also show that simple statements about the potential benefits of a health-promoting activity can motivate engagement and adherence. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Previous studies have established that non-specific factors, namely expectancies and intrinsic motivation, play an important role in determining benefit when engaging in health-promoting activities. These studies have neglected how non-specific factors relate to initial choices to engage in health-promoting activities in the first instance. Intrinsic motivation has been found to be more strongly related to benefit than expectancies in real-world health-promoting activities. What does this study add? Intrinsic motivation predicts choices to engage with a health-promoting activity. Simple statements about benefits of a health-promoting activity motivate engagement.