Ntoumanis N, Stenling A, Thøgersen-Ntoumani C, Vlachopoulos S, Lindwall M, Gucciardi D F, Tsakonitis C
School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia.
Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2018 Feb;28(2):746-753. doi: 10.1111/sms.12951. Epub 2017 Aug 11.
Past work linking exercise identity and exercise motivation has been cross-sectional. This is the first study to model the relations between different types of exercise identity and exercise motivation longitudinally. Understanding the dynamic associations between these sets of variables has implications for theory development and applied research. This was a longitudinal survey study. Participants were 180 exercisers (79 men, 101 women) from Greece, who were recruited from fitness centers and were asked to complete questionnaires assessing exercise identity (exercise beliefs and role-identity) and exercise motivation (intrinsic, identified, introjected, external motivation, and amotivation) three times within a 6 month period. Multilevel growth curve modeling examined the role of motivational regulations as within- and between-level predictors of exercise identity, and a model in which exercise identity predicted exercise motivation at the within- and between-person levels. Results showed that within-person changes in intrinsic motivation, introjected, and identified regulations were positively and reciprocally related to within-person changes in exercise beliefs; intrinsic motivation was also a positive predictor of within-person changes in role-identity but not vice versa. Between-person differences in the means of predictor variables were predictive of initial levels and average rates of change in the outcome variables. The findings show support to the proposition that a strong exercise identity (particularly exercise beliefs) can foster motivation for behaviors that reinforce this identity. We also demonstrate that such relations can be reciprocal overtime and can depend on the type of motivation in question as well as between-person differences in absolute levels of these variables.
过去将运动身份与运动动机联系起来的研究都是横断面研究。本研究首次纵向模拟不同类型的运动身份与运动动机之间的关系。了解这些变量集之间的动态关联对理论发展和应用研究具有重要意义。这是一项纵向调查研究。研究对象是来自希腊的180名运动者（79名男性，101名女性），他们从健身中心招募而来，并被要求在6个月内分三次完成评估运动身份（运动信念和角色身份）和运动动机（内在动机、认同动机、内摄动机、外部动机和无动机）的问卷。多层次增长曲线模型检验了动机调节作为运动身份的个体内和个体间预测因素的作用，以及一个运动身份在个体内和个体间水平上预测运动动机的模型。结果表明，内在动机、内摄动机和认同动机的个体内变化与运动信念的个体内变化呈正相关且相互影响；内在动机也是角色身份个体内变化的正向预测因素，但反之则不然。预测变量均值的个体间差异可预测结果变量的初始水平和平均变化率。研究结果支持了这样一种观点，即强烈的运动身份（特别是运动信念）可以促进强化这种身份的行为的动机。我们还证明，这种关系可能会随着时间相互影响，并且可能取决于所讨论的动机类型以及这些变量绝对水平的个体间差异。
