Adherence from the French adherer is behaving to stick. It should not be confused with compliance. Adherence implies a more active or collaborative role in behavioral decision making. By contrast, compliance infers the participant is in a more passive role in which he or she either obeys the recommended activity guidelines or the participant does not. The term ‘adherence’ generally refers to the level of participation achieved in a behavioral regimen once the individual has agreed to undertake it.
This definition of exercise change has led researchers to focus their attention on increasing exercise participation in those individuals who are already somewhat active or are in the stages of becoming more active. In the area of exercise, adherence is defined as the degree to which an individual is able to sustain an exercise program. Among the many psychological factors that may contribute to exercise adherence, three broad categories that have received extensive research attention are outcome expectations and social influences.
Outcome expectations can be positive (reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease) or negative (sore muscles or injury). The literature is mixed on the relationship between outcome expectations and exercise adherence. Still, most literature supports the notion that having positive outcome expectations is a necessary, though potentially insufficient, characteristic of exercise adherence.
Like outcome expectations, social influences are included in most theoretical models developed to predict exercise adherence. Social influences include social support from family members or friends, group norms or cohesion in an exercise class, or social environmental factors related to economic status or culture. The way people perceive social support can have positive and negative influences on exercise adherence. Positive social support from family and friends can include opportunities to exercise with the person and giving encouragement for the person to continue exercising.
However, even these kinds of activities can negatively influence exercise adherence if the person receiving the support feels pressured. Whereas exercise psychologists use the word ‘adherence’ to mean staying with (or
dropping out of) an exercise program, others have broadened the construct to refer to the study of participation in exercise from a multidisciplinary approach.
Using it in this way means that it goes beyond the construct of motivation. For instance, adhering to an exercise program has physiological effects that can then legitimately be studied under the title ‘adherence.’
***Contributed by Youngho Kim for Hackfort, D., Schinke, R. J., & Strauss, B. (Eds.). (2019). Dictionary of sport psychology: sport, exercise, and performing arts. Academic Press.
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