| 英文摘要 |
Introduction: The field of applied psychology proposed that self-talk is a type of psychological strategy used by individuals to enhance or maintain their behavior, however most of the past researches focused on athletes’ self-talk. Limited studies investigated exercisers’ self-talk despite past research suggested that exercisers often uses self-talk to aid exercise participation and negative self-talk may bring about negative effects to the exercise participation. Therefore, the influence of self-talk in the exercise context should not be overlooked and the purpose of this study was to explore self-talk in the exercise domain. Method: Grounded theory was the main approach used for this study whereby interview data were collected and analyzed simultaneously. After interviews were conducted, all interviews were transcribed verbatim by the researcher and line-by-line open coding was performed separately by the researcher and a trained researcher. A total of nine regular exercisers exercise on an average of 4.57 times per week (Mage = 34.22 years, age range: 25–45), consent was obtained from each participant before conducting the semi-structured interview. Strauss and Corbin’s grounded theory analytic procedure was used to analyze the semi-structured interviews. Results: Findings revealed that self-talk used by exercisers was either exercise-related or non-exercise-related. In exercise-related self-talk, four instructional themes (concentration, exercise planning, movement regulation, and goal setting) and four motivational themes (confidence enhancement, persistence, positive emotions, and self-encouragement) emerged for positive self-talk while four themes emerged from negative self-talk (negative reinforcement, complaints, excuses, and self-criticism). Non-exercise-related self-talk comprised of three of the following themes: social comparison, work planning, and reflection (self-realization, self-worth, problem-solving, and life events). Conclusion: Exercisers uses strategic self-talk (e.g., motivational or instructional) to aid ones exercise participation and non-exercise related self-talk (e.g., reflection or work planning) are used for oneself to reflect. |
