Vacature

Knowing that a physically active lifestyle has been linked to health and longevity, the Netherlands has set the ambition to become the sportiest nation by 2030. To obtain this goal, we will need to better understand the challenges and motivations of recreational exercisers: What drives people to become active and remain active, and what feeds their exercise motivation? In this project, we will take a psychophysiological approach exploring the underpinnings of exercise motivation in sport and exercise. In previous work, we have studied the interplay between fatigue, affective load, social factors and situational factors in competitive situations, which gained us a better understanding of competition. How do these interacting internal and external mechanisms now play a role in exercise motivation, for example what is the role of social factors or affective load? We aim to further use virtual reality settings to impose elegant experimental manipulations developing our understanding of the underpinnings of exercise motivation. In this project, you will thus contribute to developing an underpinning framework to understand exercise motivation as a multidimensional construct. You will explore potential applications to promote sport and exercise motivation and thereby exercise participation in the general population, to contribute to a healthy society for all and work towards real life impact.