Have you ever wondered how some people seem to meet their fitness goals with ease and enjoy eating healthy foods while others constantly find it difficult to do both? According to a new study, people with stronger life purpose are more likely to accept messages that promote health behavior change than those with weaker sense of purpose. And this may be because they experience less decision conflict when considering health advice.
For this study, the researchers chose to test a theory:that making health decisions requires less effort for those with a higher sense of purpose in life. According to them, health decisions, even those as simple and mundane as choosing between the elevator and the stairs, involve a degree of decision conflict. But what if some people experience less conflict than others when considering these options, perhaps because they have a stronger guiding purpose that helps resolve the conflicts?
To test this idea, the researchers recruited sedentary people who had to exercise more. (To be selected for the study, participants had to be overweight or obese and had to have exercised less than 200 minutes in the seven days prior to screening.) Participants completed a life purpose survey by rating grade on which they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “I have a sense of direction and purpose in my life” or “I don't have a good idea of what I'm trying to accomplish in life.” They were then shown health messages that promote physical activity. Their responses to the messages were monitored by an fMRI scanner, focusing on brain regions that are active when people are unsure of what to choose or when they are in a conflict situation.
The participants who reported a stronger sense of life purpose were more likely to agree with the health messages and to have less activity in brain regions associated with conflict processing. In fact, the researchers were able to predict how likely a person was to agree with health messages based on the degree of brain activity in these regions.
