The role of anticipated affect in the context of physical activity: a scoping review

Individuals often anticipate how they will feel during a potential future behaviour. Assuming that this anticipation may influence actual behaviour, the aim of this scoping review was to provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on the role of anticipated affect in the context of physical activity. Thus, relationships between anticipated affect and (1) other psychological variables related to physical activity or (2) physical activity behaviour were analysed. Five data bases were searched for studies involving anticipated affect of physical activity, resulting in 33 relevant studies. The results were clustered into five categories. (1a) Anticipated affect was related to intention and (1b) to affective experiences. However, a forecasting error appeared in several studies showing that participants underestimated how positive their emotions during or after physical activity actually were. (2a) Due to a low number of studies, it remains unclear whether anticipated affect can predict future physical activity behaviour directly. (2b) Intervention studies with physical activity as the dependent variable and (2c) as the independent variable revealed promising approaches to facilitate positive anticipated affect regarding future physical activity. Future research should consider cognitive biases in affective forecasting studies and develop validated questionnaires for studying anticipated affect of physical activity.