Adults’ exercise-related ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking and leisure-time physical activity: a scoping review
Updegraff and colleagues went looking for research on a familiar pattern: a person who cannot follow their exercise plan exactly decides to do nothing at all rather than do a reduced version. They searched six databases for studies on all-or-nothing thinking in voluntary leisure-time physical activity among adults and, out of more than four thousand papers screened, found nine that qualified, five of them quantitative and four qualitative. The finding is therefore about the literature rather than about people. Established scales and interview responses both indicate that the pattern is real and does appear to influence whether people exercise, and that is as far as the evidence currently goes. There is no validated measure of it, no reliable estimate of how common it is, and no work establishing how much activity it accounts for. The authors call for those three things, and note that the question matters more now that activity guidelines have become less rigid. This vault should cite it as an identified gap, not as a demonstrated effect.
Updegraff and colleagues went looking for research on a familiar pattern: a person who cannot follow their exercise plan exactly decides to do nothing at all rather than do a reduced version. They searched six databases for studies on all-or-nothing thinking in voluntary leisure-time physical activity among adults and, out of more than four thousand papers screened, found nine that qualified, five of them quantitative and four qualitative. The finding is therefore about the literature rather than about people. Established scales and interview responses both indicate that the pattern is real and does appear to influence whether people exercise, and that is as far as the evidence currently goes. There is no validated measure of it, no reliable estimate of how common it is, and no work establishing how much activity it accounts for. The authors call for those three things, and note that the question matters more now that activity guidelines have become less rigid. This vault should cite it as an identified gap, not as a demonstrated effect.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
published online 6 March 2026, pp. 1-20, not yet assigned to a volume or issue. doi:10.1080/1750984X.2026.2638822; and Segar, M. L., Updegraff, J. A., McGhee-Dinvaut, A. & Taber, J. M. (2025). "The secret life of all-or-nothing thinking with exercise: new insights into an overlooked barrier." BMC Public Health, 26(1), 298, published online 19 December 2025. doi:10.1186/s12889-025-25780-9
Where we use it
- Nobody Is Born Consistent, Why We Move
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2026.2638822
DOI: 10.1080/1750984X.2026.2638822