Run Or Die!
4th February 2011
Did you know that physical activity is actually good for you and that you will live a lot longer the more physically active you are?
Really. It’s true. And, here’s the key data line from a recent meta-analysis (PDF) to prove it.
. . . highly active men had a 22% lower risk of all-cause mortality (RR=0.78; 95% CI: 0.72 to 0.84) compared to mildly active men. For women, the relative risk was 0.69 (95% CI: 0.53 to 0.90).
Wow. A 22% lower risk of dying for men and 31% lower risk for women. Here’s how the authors of this meta label their effects with the first sentence from their Discussion:
Regular physical activity over longer periods of observation, ranging from 4 to 40 years, is strongly associated (my emphasis) with lowering all-cause mortality in active subjects compared to sedentary subjects.
Now, of course, a Small Effect in the Windowpane would be 50%, so the meta-analytic result is just about half of a Small Effect. What would you call something that is half the size of Small. Petite? Diminutive? Elfin? Hey, try hitting the synonym function on your word processor and see what you get.
No matter the label, one half of a Small Effect is a pretty little thing. Barely detectable above random variation which means if you want to claim, Statistical Significance!, you’d better have huge sample sizes of hundreds of thousands of people.
One half of a Small Effect is around .1 of a standard deviation. A reasonable estimate of the standard deviation for US mortality is 15 years. So if you get a lot of physical activity compared to a couch potato, you can expect (PDF) to live on average 1.5 years longer.
From here on, I’m going to write as if we’re in the real world instead of the fantasy island of peer review science. If I could design the greatest national persuasion intervention in the history of civilization that caused everyone hit the gym with lots of vigorous exercise most days of the week, it would have no obvious, practical impact on mortality. No one except a statistician could see an effect half the size of a Small Effect.
What does this mean for persuasion? Consider the Rules.
1. Persuasion Is Strategic Or It Is Not.
You don’t persuade just for fun, you persuade to achieve a larger goal. In this case, you don’t persuade people to exercise just for the hell of it, but because you expect to produce a Strategic Change. People will live longer. We’ll spend less money on Health Care. We’ll break the spiral of Be Lazy, Get Sick, Take A Pill, Get Side Effects, Take Another Pill. For persuasion Strategy, physical activity will not lead to the real differences in the daily lives of people we might expect. If you think that increased physical activity should be mandated in Health Care Reform We Can Believe In, you are not a scientist, but a zealot who is going to fail.
Therefore, seek other Strategic Outcomes. Increased physical activity has quantitatively stronger effects on psychological variables like satisfaction, quality of life, and self efficacy. For example, this meta on healthy older adults found a 38/62 Windowpane on health related quality of life. Simply stated, healthy older people who exercised more reported a near Medium improvement in their quality of life. Stated yet another way, physical activity is probably more useful for changing psychology than physical health. Thus, use persuasion to increase activity to: make people feel happier, more in control, more energetic. (If you don’t see the Strategic persuasion implications of happy, efficacious, and motivated people, you ain’t a persuasion maven.)
2. All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.
My friends in the Lifestyle Marching Band would go to the wall, refuse the blindfold, then shout, “Run or Die!” when the firing squad volleyed. And, it’s making no difference in the real world. People are not exercising more vigorously or just more, despite millions of dollars from NIH, RWJ, or others cut from that cloth. When the Other Guy isn’t changing, you need to do some self persuasion.
Furthermore, I’d ask, are you a scientist? These results strongly suggest there’s not much there, there, with physical activity and mortality. Think about that when you are reviewing a paper, sitting on a grant committee, advising grad students, listening to Yet Another Run Or Die presentation at a conference. Think about that when a colleague sends out a petition or organizes a rally on Run Or Die. Please use science to change science and not persuasion.
3. You Cannot Persuade a Falling Apple. The Falling Apple of sedentary lifestyle is not lazy, ignorant people sitting on the sofa or the Agriculture/Industrial/Marketing Complex. It is the inevitable unintended consequence of a Post Modern Industrial Society. Technology removes the necessity of human physical effort. Education moves people to think rather than do. Changing gender roles drive men and women on the career path with inevitable changes to family work. Sedentary living is the price you pay for iGizmos, cool restaurants, and Web 2.0. WATtap, baby.
Let’s get out of here.
This is a punishing post. So, I’ve assembled a list of YouTube videos with running as a theme in the music. Pick the one that makes you feel best! Just tap your way to happiness!
Go “Running On Empty” with Jackson Browne.
Let’s “Run, Run, Run” with the Velvet Underground.
Van Halen will take you “Running With The Devil.”
Maybe you’d prefer to “Run Like Hell” with Pink Floyd.
For the thoughtful among you, go quietly with Clapton, “Running On Faith,” unplugged!
Hard to beat CCR and “Run Through The Jungle.”