Acute Effects of Exercise on Risk-Taking: Different Responses in Males and Females

In recent years there has been great interest in the effects of exercise on cognition, but few have investigated whether physical activity influences risk-taking. Purpose: To investigate the effects of acute moderate to vigorous exercise on risky decision-making. Methods: Healthy (free of psychological or neurological conditions), recreationally active males and females (n = 20, 50% females, mean age = 22.4 years, sd = 2.48) performed either a 30-min bout of cycling at 50% to 60% of their maximal power output or watched a neutral film over the course of two laboratory visits (repeated measures, randomized crossover design). Following the interventions, participants completed computerized behavioral tasks: the Balloon-Analogue Risk Task (BART), the Risky Gains Task, and the STOP-IT task and provided saliva samples (pre and post) to measure changes in cortisol. Results: There was a significant interaction between sex and condition (p = .01, η_p² = .3) for one of the risk-taking outcomes of the BART (number of explosions). Females exploded fewer balloons post-exercise. Performance on the other tasks did not change significantly between conditions (all p > .05). Cortisol increased significantly following exercise and responses did not differ between males and females. Considering cortisol change post-exercise similarly resulted in a significant sex by condition interaction (p = .005, η_p² = .44), with males exploding more balloons and females exploding fewer post-exercise. Conclusion: Acute exercise appears to have differing effects on males and females. Exercise resulted in risk seeking in males and risk aversion in females as measured by the BART.