12.6: The Measurement of Remembered Pleasure and Forecasted Pleasure

It is important to note that remembered pleasure (sometimes called recalled or remembered affect) and forecasted pleasure (sometimes called predicted pleasure) are distinct psychological constructs and use different measurement strategies from those discussed so far. Until now, we have discussed approaches appropriate for the measurement of moment-to-moment experienced core affective responses to exercise (i.e., how one feels at a given moment, assessed before, during, or after exercise). The measurement of remembered pleasure and forecasted pleasure is also occasionally included in research studies and may be useful to practitioners, but this requires a different approach. These constructs are further discussed in Chapter 11 by Jones and Zenko (2021).

Remembered pleasure is a retrospective evaluation about a previous affective experience. For example, several minutes, hours, or days after exercising in a laboratory or fitness center setting, you may consider asking your participant to evaluate their exercise session by responding to the question “How did the exercise session in the laboratory make you feel?” (Zenko et al., 2016). Likewise, forecasted pleasure might be assessed using the question “If you repeated the exercise session again, how do you think it would make you feel?” (Zenko et al., 2016). In both instances, the exerciser is required to cognitively appraise the exercise session and evaluate a past experience or make predictions about a future experience. This is different than moment-to-moment core affective assessments about how an exerciser feels right now. Since memories and predictions are susceptible to biases, it is expected that remembered pleasure of a previous exercise session will not be fully explained by moment-to-moment core affective responses measured during the actual exercise session. Likewise, it is expected that predictions and affective forecasts about future exercise sessions will also be biased and not fully explained by experienced pleasure or remembered pleasure.

For example, a pessimistic or apprehensive new exerciser may have felt pleasant during their first exercise session in their new program, but, based on a lifetime of unpleasant experiences, may predict feelings of displeasure even if they repeat the same exercise protocol in the future. On the other hand, experienced exercisers may feel quite unpleasant during their regular training session, but they may choose to adhere to their programming and repeat the exercise session the next day and may even predict that it will feel more pleasant. Put differently, perfect relationships between experienced pleasure, remembered pleasure, and forecasted pleasure are unlikely, even if the exerciser is evaluating the same exercise protocol. Indeed, Zenko et al. (2016) found that salient aspects of an exercise session (slope of pleasure, or the rate and direction of affective responses experienced during exercise) explained about 46% of the variance in remembered pleasure assessed about 15 minutes after the exercise session ended. Remembered pleasure, in turn, explained about 70% of the variance in forecasted pleasure, indicating that about 30% was explained by other factors.