ABSTRACT
The concept of emotional well-being is an aspect of mental health—related to anxiety and depression, yet also distinct from them—that has been gaining increased research attention in the exercise domain. Among exercise researchers, a growing dissatisfaction with more general self-report instruments led to a movement in the early 1990s toward the development of exercise-specific scales. One of the underlying assumptions of the vast majority of research examining the affective/emotional/mood responses to exercise is that exercise impacts certain affect/emotions/moods. Unfortunately, a number of issues involved in the examination of the psychological feeling states in the exercise literature continue to be problematic. These issues include how such states are conceptualized, how and when they are measured, and issues related to what is often called the "dose-response" relationship. Given the health benefits that accrue from exercise, a better understanding of the psychological outcomes could have a very worthwhile influence on behavior.
