New Delhi | A workout in tune with one's personality -- being social or introverted -- could make exercising more enjoyable and yield better results, according to a new study.
Extroverted individuals tend to enjoy high-intensity activities that require significant energy and effort, while those with neuroticism—the tendency to worry—may find less satisfaction in activities demanding sustained effort.
Instead, the latter might prefer short bursts of activity and aerobic training, which are known to relieve stress, according to the study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Researchers from University College London, UK, assessed 132 volunteers' personality traits according to the Big 5 model, which categorises an individual on the basis of their dominant trait -- are they extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, neurotic or open to experiences.
"We know that the global population is becoming increasingly sedentary. You often hear about people trying to become more active, but struggling to make lasting changes," first author Flaminia Ronca, from the University College London, said.
"We found some clear links between personality traits and the type of exercise the participants enjoyed most, which I think is important because we could potentially use this knowledge to tailor physical activity recommendations to the individual -- and hopefully help them to become and remain more active," Ronca said.
Personality has been shown to influence one's choice of which organised sport to pursue.
For example, athletes in individual sports tend to score high on conscientiousness and autonomy, while those in team sports tend to score high on agreeableness and sociotropy, which is an excessive focus on social acceptance.
This study discovered that personality traits significantly predict participants' fitness levels and their enjoyment of exercises with different intensities.
Conscientious people were expected to have greater fitness and be more likely to clock in more hours of physical activity in a week.
Additionally, extraversion was associated with higher fitness levels, while neuroticism was linked to slower heart recovery. Interestingly, participants with high levels of neuroticism appeared to benefit the most from the stress-relieving effects of aerobic training.
"Of the five personality traits, only extraversion was predictive of having a higher (fitness), anaerobic threshold, and peak power output," the authors wrote.
"Conscientiousness predicted press-up completion, longer plank times, more weekly hours of physical activity, and lower body fat percentage," they added.
Further, "those who scored high on neuroticism benefited the most from potential stress-reducing effects of aerobic training," the authors noted.