The researchers then viewed death records from 2011, which was 21 years after the first survey was conducted. Zahrt and Crum were interested in one question in particular: “Would you say that you are physically more active, less active, or about as active as other persons your age?” Octavia Zahrt is a doctoral candidate at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In one of the samples, participants wore an accelerometer to measure their activity over a week. The surveys documented participants’ levels of physical activity, health and personal background, among other measures. Powerful Effects of PerceptionĬrum, an assistant professor of psychology, and Zahrt, a doctoral candidate at Stanford Graduate School of Business, analyzed surveys from more than 60,000 U.S. “Our findings fall in line with a growing body of research suggesting that our mindsets - in this case, beliefs about how much exercise we are getting relative to others - can play a crucial role in our health,” Crum says. The research, appearing July 20 in Health Psychology, finds that people who think they are less active than others in a similar age bracket die younger than those who believe they are more active – even if their actual activity levels are similar. Your answer might be linked to your risk of premature death decades from now – no matter how physically active you actually are, according to research by Stanford scholars Octavia Zahrt and Alia Crum. Would you say that you are physically more active, less active, or about equally active as other people your age? Our mindsets - in this case, beliefs about how much exercise we are getting relative to others - can play a crucial role in our health.

Perception definition health