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Copyright
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(Copyright © 2020, American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance) |
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Abstract
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In recent years there has been great interest in the effects of exercise on cognition, but few have investigated whether physical activity influences risk-taking.
PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of acute moderate to vigorous exercise on risky decision-making.
METHODS: Healthy (free of psychological or neurological conditions), recreationally active males and females (n = 20, 50% females, mean age = 22.4 years, sd = 2.48) performed either a 30-min bout of cycling at 50% to 60% of their maximal power output or watched a neutral film over the course of two laboratory visits (repeated measures, randomized crossover design). Following the interventions, participants completed computerized behavioral tasks: the Balloon-Analogue Risk Task (BART), the Risky Gains Task, and the STOP-IT task and provided saliva samples (pre and post) to measure changes in cortisol.
RESULTS: There was a significant interaction between sex and condition (p = .01, ηp2 = .3) for one of the risk-taking outcomes of the BART (number of explosions). Females exploded fewer balloons post-exercise. Performance on the other tasks did not change significantly between conditions (all p > .05). Cortisol increased significantly following exercise and responses did not differ between males and females. Considering cortisol change post-exercise similarly resulted in a significant sex by condition interaction (p = .005, ηp2 = .44), with males exploding more balloons and females exploding fewer post-exercise.
CONCLUSION: Acute exercise appears to have differing effects on males and females. Exercise resulted in risk seeking in males and risk aversion in females as measured by the BART.
Language: en |