Understand the ‘winding paths of the mind’ as you move from the couch to the gym

As humans, we suffer from behavioral biases. Systematic errors in thinking that affect decision making what is in our lives. Psychology and behavioral economics are fields devoted to the study and understanding of these phenomena, thanks to the excellent work of psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s.

Cognitive biases are distortions, deviations or changes in our thoughts and judgments about a thing, situation, person or object. These are mental shortcuts that allow us to process information more efficiently.

However, the decisions taken are not always in our favor. There are various situations in life that are susceptible to cognitive biases.Including those related to health and physical exercise.

Understand how we are affected by cognitive biases in the ordinary situations we encounter every day, from getting off the couch to working out at the gym.

Getting up (or staying) off the couch

Getting off the couch to exercise after a tiring day at work can be a difficult task. because we value immediate benefits over possible future gainscharacterizes hyperbolic discounting.

When exercise, which requires immediate resources such as time, effort and energy, as well as sometimes money, is motivated solely by later benefits (such as health and aesthetics), the value we place on that activity weakens.

From a present perspective, we realize that we value an immediate reward more than waiting for later gratification. So Netflix 1 x 0 Academia.

Science is exploring how we can reverse this couch-defeated scenario and streaming (physical inactivity), developing theories to explain this phenomenon. The main, Embeds emotional memory for exercise and sport as a key componentIt affects our decision.

go to the gym

When you arrive at the gym, you may fall victim to bias: When there is a price anchor in the monthly fee: the most expensive is the only monthly fee that is high in price.

Due to the emergence of this price, Cheaper plans are available for the practitioner: quarterly, six-monthly or annually. However, initial exposure affects decision making.

Tip is to pay attention to annual plans that charge your credit card; because research shows that only 17% go to the gym in the first year, even though 86% continue to pay. Maybe these people experience prejudice status quo – The tendency to keep things as they are, such as paying by credit card even if one does not participate in the annual gym plan. Although it is not the best option, inertia prevails.

Finally: time to train in the gym

We suffer from confirmation bias when we pay more attention to aspects of education that we already believe are more productive and close ourselves off to new evidence. Sometimes this can cost us time, energy and money because this belief may not be the best path.

There are various beliefs in the gym that make it difficult for people to connect with exercise. One of the strongest relates to the need to train to concentric muscle failure. This belief appears to be deeply rooted in the minds of some practitioners.There is no room for change in the face of existing evidence to the contrary.

Others believe free weights are better than machines for hypertrophy. People may also have a conservative bias in their beliefs, such as believing that “cardio” exercise is the only effective way to lose weight because they’ve heard it so much in the past.

We suffer from false dichotomy bias when we believe we only have two options, such as thinking that only running or weight training is a form of physical exercise. In some of these cases, we can be influenced by others, which characterizes the herd effectIt’s like trying to do the sport that’s trendy at the time I’m writing this – running on the street.

Have you ever noticed how people, when observed, change their behavior and try to do better? In a gym you can: ego liftersIt shows the bad side of this effect, known as Hawthorne, who lift weights to feed their own ego.

On the other hand, This is the effect that explains the best results of training with the company. (friends or exercise experts), as shown in studies.

Some people suffer from social anxiety at the gym. The spotlight effect describes our tendency to overestimate how much other people notice us.

We tend to think that the spotlight is always on us, highlighting our mistakes or failures for all to see, the way some people feel in a crowded gym. Some still suffer from the illusion of transparency; It is a false belief that our inner thoughts and feelings are visible to those around us, but they are not.

What we remember from training

When I say that emotional memory is important in deciding whether to get off the couch or not, we know that we cannot holistically and completely record and remember every experience we have.

The end-of-peak rule is the memory bias we suffer from judging an experience by how we felt at its peak (its peak) and how we felt at its completion (its end), rather than its totality. Only these parts are recorded in our memory.

Our memory is also affected by our current emotional states, which we call memory versus mood bias. There is a harmony between what we store in our memory and our mood. If a person’s mood improves after an exercise session, they are more likely to recall positive memories related to exercise.

The opposite is also true; Negative information or experiences acquired during exercise negatively affect memory. Tip, it’s important to pay attention to the last exercise in the workout and finish with an enjoyable activity.

Whether the training is short or long does not matter in terms of memory of what we did. The total duration of the experience is neglected (duration neglect bias) and has little effect on our memory; how important we felt was for judgment, that is, how pleasant or unpleasant the experience was.

Now that we know some of the cognitive biases that apply to exercises, last but not least, we need to be wary of blind spot bias.

From him, we may perceive ourselves as less sensitive to the various types of cognitive biases that exist, as they know they exist compared to the population. Knowledge does not guarantee that we will be free from their effects, but it may be the path to a better experience.