RESPONSES TO PHYSICAL EXERTION IN ACTIVE AND INACTIVE MALES AND FEMALES

An experiment is presented that investigates the relationship between gender, exercise history, and psychological affect during and after exercising at different workloads. High-active and low-active subjects reported their psychological affect in the last 30 s of and 5 min after exercising at 60 and 90% VO2 max workloads. Results indicated that high-active subjects (both males and females) were significantly more positive in the 90% workload condition than were the low-active group, but there was no difference between the groups in the 60% workload condition (p < .001). These results suggest that psychological affect in exercise settings is influenced by exercise history, workload, and time when self-reported affect is requested.