- Death and disease warnings were the best at encouraging people to stay fit
- Morbid messages outweigh others about obesity and the cost to society
- Study author says findings may help improve motivational power of fitness apps
According to a study, instilling the fear of death in people may be the best way to motivate them to exercise.
researchers measured People’s motivation to exercise after reading five different messages.
The results show that warnings about disease and even death from lack of physical activity perform best.
Morbid messages beat similar warnings about being fat, social stigma from being unfit, or the cost of medical treatment to taxpayers.
This graph shows that messages warning of illness and death from lack of physical activity were the best performers to motivate both men and women to exercise. Represents a neutral response to cross messages
Study author Dr Kimute Oibo from the University of Waterloo in Canada said the findings will help improve exercise-related communication for fitness apps.
“The findings provide the basis for fitness app designers to make the most of health messages related to illness and death as a motivational technology to inspire behavior change,” he said.
In the study, 669 people were asked to rate five messages on how they encouraged them to exercise with a fitness app, doing things like push-ups and squats.
These messages were based on five different categories, financial, obesity, death, disease and social stigma.
Authors of new study set out to find out whether negative messages about exercise can help motivate people to stay fit.
In a financial message, study participants were informed of the $6.8 billion per year (£3.99 billion) cost to Canadian taxpayers for lack of physical activity.
For obesity, participants were informed that one in four Canadians is classified as medically obese.
The deaths included people told of a World Health Organization (WHO) figure that ‘six percent of the world’s deaths are due to physical inactivity’.
As for illness, study participants were given a quote from British statesman Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby: ‘Those who can’t find time for exercise must find time for illness.’
And for social stigma, volunteers were asked to evaluate the Canadian Obesity Network’s statement: ‘Stigma against people with obesity is tantamount to racial discrimination.’
Participants were asked to rate the messages from one to seven, with one meaning that the message ‘does not prompt me to start/continue exercising’ and seven meaning ‘make me fully start/continue exercising’. Inspires to keep.
When assessed it was clear that messages about disease and obesity were the top performers, scoring an average of 4.8 and 4.69.
In comparison, messages about finance received the lowest at 3.7, obesity at 3.5, and stigma at 3.48.
Dr Oibo also looked at the role of gender in interpreting the messages and observed that messages of color of illness and death were more likely to motivate both sexes to exercise.
He added that future studies should consider other demographic characteristics, such as age, culture, race and education, to determine whether these factors influenced the effectiveness of these messages.
Physical inactivity in the UK is estimated to cost the NHS £1 billion a year, with six in 10 adults either overweight or obese.
The cost in the US is high, with a sedentary lifestyle estimated to cost the US health care system $117 billion (about £85 billion) per year.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 42 percent of the US adult population is obese, and nine percent are severely obese.
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