The University of Manitoba campuses and research spaces are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Ininiwak, Anisininewuk, Dakota Oyate, Dene and Inuit, and on the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. More
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, R3T 2N2
The Health and Exercise Psychology Lab seeks to understand how psychological variables can impact health and exercise behaviour as well as how health and exercise behaviours can impact psychological variables.
Combining her own experiences with physical activity and her background in psychology, Dr. Strachan uses quantitative methods and social psychological theories to find answers to how we can help people stick with their healthy lifestyle choices.
Self-compassion involves offering oneself care and support during challenging times. Self-regulation describes the process of managing your health behaviours. Successful self-regulation involves actions like setting goals, monitoring goal progress, and adjusting behaviours when insufficient progress has been made.
The lab is examining self-compassion in relation to the self-regulation of health behaviours with a primary focus on physical activity. Whether self-compassion helps people self-regulate their health behaviours and enhances their well-being, including looking at people with or at risk for chronic disease, everyday exercisers, parents of young children, and athletes.
When a person identifies with exercise, they see exercise as self-descriptive. Drawing from identity theory, the lab explores relationships between exercise identity and exercise behaviour, as well as behaviours that help people self-regulate their exercise.
Some current identity research topics being conducted relate to building or strengthening exercise identities, examining whether exercise identities can fluctuate in different social situations and whether self-compassion helps us understand when and how people respond to identity-challenging situations.
Research in how people can best communicate about their health behaviours draws from Dr. Strachan's personal experience teaching motivational interviewing and physical activity counselling. The lab explores ways to improve empathic accuracy when health professionals talk with patients about physical activity.
The lab is currently working with a parterns with expertise in patient engagement research (where patients or community members are included as partners on the research team) to determine how motivational interviewing techniques can be used to improve communication between patient/community partners and researchers.
Rhodes, R.E., Rebar, A.L., & Strachan, S. (accepted). Physical activity identity as an axis of dual process motivation and self-regulation processes: current evidence and future research directions. Psychology of Sport and Exercise: 25th anniversary edition.
