2023 Volume 43 Issue 2 Pages 1-13
Huge individual differences in terms of ability in competitive exercise situations tend to make it difficult for participants, particularly those who are not good at exercise, to enjoy engaging in competition. Therefore, we examined whether this problem can be resolved by goal setting, which will help realize an enjoyable competitive exercise situation. In this regard, the effect of goal setting and an enjoyable exercise situation must be analyzed in both offline and remote environments considering the shift to remote physical education classes in response to COVID-19. We hypothesized that competition between teams is effective in promoting interaction. We also aimed to obtain basic findings valid for both in-person and remote exercise situations, which can be implemented in physical education classes. To this end, we asked 96 university students belonging to a national university in Kanto, Japan, to perform an exercise task. We divided them into two groups of 48 students; one group participated in the task in a face-to-face environment (Study 1) and the other in a remote environment (Study 2). They performed a body-building exercise (squat) to compete against each other. We compared the results between individual and team competitions. Then, we compared the differences in the effects of performance goals (PG) and mastery goals (MG) on goal setting during competition in terms of enjoyment (Sports Flow Scale <Yagi and Sakairi, 2009>) measured after the exercise, as well as proactive engagement and effective interaction (learning checklist). Our results demonstrated that setting MG is more effective than setting PG during competition exercise situations in promoting enjoyment and proactive effort, regardless of the environment in which the exercise is conducted (face-to-face or remote). In terms of the type of exercise (individual or team), results demonstrated that competition between teams is more effective than competition between individuals. In particular, MG-based competition enhanced enjoyment and proactive engagement (p<.05) in all implementation environments and forms (face-to-face/individual, face-to-face/team, remote/individual, and remote/team). Additionally, in both face-to-face and remote environments, we obtained more effective interaction in the inter-team competition than in the inter-individual competition (p<.05). Based on these findings, we suggested the active utilization of inter-team competition and the setting of MG, such as aiming to break one’s existing record, to enable participants to enjoy and proactively engage in competitive exercise situations in cooperation with others.
