Why people should run after positive affective experiences, not health benefits

Most individuals are now aware of health benefits of physical activity (PA) but remain physically inactive. Mobilizing a multidisciplinary approach at the crossroads between decision-making sciences, we investigate why highlighting the health benefits of PA is unlikely to promote a sustained engagement in PA. Essential features of decision making – effort-discounting, delay-discounting and beliefs distortion – may weaken the subjective value attributed to health benefits, making the latter insufficient to trigger PA behaviors. We develop a decision model demonstrating that health benefits hold a weak subjective value, in comparison with the cost of engaging in PA (e.g., effort) and of our innate attraction toward sedentary alternatives. Instead, focusing on positive affective experiences could counteract the impact of aforementioned features and ultimately favor a regular engagement in PA. Tackling the current pandemic of physical inactivity would therefore require an urgent change in the promotion of PA, so as to make affective experiences central.