Program and Aims

Conceptual, theoretical and methodological advances in exercise motivation research: Automaticity and affect

How does exercise make people feel? Why do people fall short of acting rationally and in accordance with their beliefs, values, and intentions? In the past few years, researchers have increasingly recognized (and demonstrated empirically) that the pandemic of physical inactivity, behavior change, and exercise motivation cannot be sufficiently understood without addressing the affective and automatic bases of behavior.

The primary aim of this summer school is to provide young scholars in exercise psychology with conceptual and methodological "know-how" that will enable them to thrive as researchers, teachers, and clinicians in the next, "post-cognitivist" phase that our field is entering. 

The Summer School is dedicated to the in-depth discussion of the fundamentals of the research area, the illustration of innovative tools, methods and research designs, and in particular to the illustration of possibilities for young researchers to contribute their own ideas to this seminal field of research. As a result, ideas and plans for internationally coordinated research collaborations will be developed which, in particular, will address the specific research interests of the participants.

Learning activities include impulse and brief overview lectures by the three mentors, moderated group discussions and hands-on demonstrations of research methods and tests. A characteristic of this Summer School will be the extensive personal coaching offered by the four mentors and the many opportunities for in-depth discussion with them (as well as with the other participants).

Learning outcomes

1. Upon completing the course, the students / attendees will be able to:
2. Distinguish the defining features of core affect, mood, and emotion
3. Articulate well-grounded rationales for selecting measures of affective constructs (and, thus, avoid statements such as "this measure was used because it has been used before")
4. Distinguish the features of different categories of tasks for the assessment of implicit / automatic processes
5. Adequately document the key procedural details of performance-based tasks used for the assessment of implicit / automatic processes
6. Use "best practices" in the assessment of implicit / automatic processes
7. Understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of psychophysiological procedures used in the study of implicit / automatic processes
8. Grasp fundamental concepts in psychophysiology
9. Comprehend basic steps involved in the processing of psychophysiological data

The summer school will start on Tuesday, July 9,  2019, at 10:00 a.m., and the last session will end on Saturday, July 13, 2019, at 4:00 p.m.

...and of  course there will be a social program with short excursions into the beautiful nature and lake landscape around Potsdam as well as visits and sightseeing in Berlin. We will have fun together!

Preliminary program:

• Day 1: Affect (led by P. Ekkekakis)
• Day 2: Automaticity (led by R. Brand)
• Day 3: Psychophysiology, Data Management and Statistics (led by B. Cheval)
• Day 4: Development of internationally coordinated research efforts (thematic workshops; led by F. Antoniewicz).
• Day 5: Development of internationally coordinated research efforts (thematic workshops; led by F. Antoniewicz).

The program and time schedule will be further refined in the coming few weeks.