Would you be happier if you moved more? Physical activity focusing illusion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Research shows that individuals who are more physically active also report greater happiness. However, subjective well-being is prone to cognitive biases. For instance, people overrate the influence of single factors (e.g., money) on their happiness; a phenomenon termed the focusing illusion. In this study, we examined whether the relationship between physical activity and subjective well-being is stronger when individuals focus on physical activity explicitly compared to individuals with no specific focus. We experimentally manipulated the physical activity focus by varying the order of scales administration. Participants (N = 200) completed questionnaires that measured physical activity and subjective well-being placed in separate envelopes and provided in a random order. We found that individuals with higher levels of vigorous physical activity were more satisfied with life regardless of the order of scale presentation (no focusing effect). However, we found evidence of a possible focusing illusion for moderate-intensity physical activity. Individuals with higher levels of moderate-intensity physical activity reported higher subjective well-being when they were asked about physical activity first but not when they reported their well-being unaware of the upcoming physical activity questions. Thus, subjective well-being judgments can be biased by a prior focus on moderate-intensity physical activity. The order of scale administration when assessing subjective well-being should be carefully considered.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".