People who hate going to the gym are more intelligent, according to a recent study
Ah so that’s the reason
If you’ve been wondering why everyone on Ex on the Beach, Love Island and Geordie Shore are so ripped, science has an answer.
People who enjoy exercising tend to dislike thinking, according to a recent psychological study. So this explains why you hate working out so much – it’s because you’re smart!
A study was published in the “Journal of Health Psychology”, by researchers from Florida Gulf Coast University, which showed a direct link between intelligence and boredom in the gym.
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They divided the subjects into those who had a high and low ‘need for cognition’ (NFC). Of the group of 60, 30 were high-NFC and 30 were low-NFC. 20 of the participants were women, however gender had no significant impact on the study’s results.
People with a high-NFC enjoyed mental tasks and, well, thinking, more. They performed better on memory tests, enjoyed difficult tasks and took longer to make considered decisions. This group exercised less often and for shorter periods of time than low-NFC participants.
Low-NFC individuals in the test needed more peripheral information and contextual cues “such as attractiveness or a person’s mood” to make decisions.
It was found that people with a low-NFC, while exercising, “are better able to dissociate themselves from cues related to physical exertion”. In turn, “this dissociation would make physical activity seem easier to these individuals”. Low-NFC subjects would exercise more often and for longer periods.
The results stated: “The difference between high- and low-NFC individuals in overall weekly physical activity level was highly significant, such that high-NFC individuals were far less active overall than low-NFC participants.
This NFC method – a contested measure of intelligence – has been used :”for over 30years to examine the relationship between enjoyment of effortful cognitive endeavours and other variables related to cognition.”
Ultimately the link is nothing to do with IQ, just the affinity to hard tasks. The authors of the paper also stress that “physical activity level is an important contributor to human health and is especially influential in overall quality of life”.
So, if you’re bored in the gym, don’t fret. It may just mean you think more.