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Enjoyment and Success: Reciprocal Factors in Behavior Change
Author(s) -
PHILLIPS L. ALISON,
CHAPMAN GRETCHEN B.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00849.x
Subject(s) - reciprocal , psychology , social psychology , philosophy , linguistics
This study assessed the role of behavior enjoyableness in development of long‐term behavior. First, as expected from the literature on attitude and behavior change (Ajzen, 1991; Ryan & Deci, 2000), initial enjoyableness of a behavior predicted how successful participants were in performing the behavior in the short term (i.e., the time until they first violated their behavioral intentions). Of primary interest, repeated successful performance was, in turn, associated with an increase in reported enjoyableness of the behavior in the longer term. The study demonstrates the importance of a reciprocal relationship of behavior enjoyableness and performance for behavior change, such that even initially non‐enjoyable behaviors can become more enjoyable with repeated performance. These findings are particularly relevant for long‐term, goal‐related behaviors.