Campus Location

Abilene Campus (Residential)

Date of Award

Spring 5-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Science

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Dr. Richard Beck

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Dr. Cherisse Flanagan

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Dr. Jennifer Shewmaker

Abstract

The people of the United States of America have been concerned with the population’s overweight and obesity rate for a while. The purpose of this study was to find out if optimism bias had an influence on fitness. Optimism bias is overestimating the likelihood of positive events and underestimate the likelihood of negative events happening in one’s life. This study created a fitness optimism scale and used a set of fitness assessments and exercise questions to correlate with the fitness optimism bias. There were 105 students who participated in this study, 82 females and 23 males with a mean age of 20. The results of the study showed no significant relationship between optimism bias and fitness. Surprisingly, trends showed that with more exercise fitness optimism bias would increase.

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