About

Seppo E. Iso-Ahola is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland's School of Public Health. His expertise primarily focuses on the psychology of health and exercise, including why some individuals engage in exercise while most do not, and the psychology of human performance. He has developed theories related to conscious and nonconscious processing and how these processes influence behavior, particularly in the context of physical activity. Iso-Ahola has also contributed to understanding the role of the human mind as both the cause and solution to the global pandemic of physical inactivity. Additionally, he has expertise in the philosophy of science, addressing issues such as the nature of scientific phenomena, the importance of replication and reproducibility, and the criteria for establishing scientific truth. His research includes the development and testing of a math-based theory of momentum, which has received significant attention and support within the field of psychology.

Selected publications

• A theory of the skill-performance relationship

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2024-02-09 · 9 citations

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  The skill-performance relationship is a cornerstone of a meritocratic society. People are selected for schools, colleges and jobs based on the premise that more skillful individuals perform better. Scientific understanding of the skill-performance relationship demands that the effect of skill on performance is objectively assessed without subjective, social, and political considerations. One of the best areas for this analysis is sports. In many sports settings, the skill-performance relationship can objectively be examined at the technical, behavioral, psychological, and neurological levels. This examination reveals that skill and performance are inextricably intertwined. While skill affects performance, performance in turn defines and affects skill. To disentangle the previously confusing and interchangeable use of these key constructs, the paper presents a theoretical model specifying that ability and effort have their own direct effects on performance, as well as indirect effects on performance through skill possession and skill execution in cognitive and physical domains of human performance. Thus, ability and skill are not the same. Although skill is a key determinant of performance, recent theory and research suggests that successful performers are successful not just because of their skills per se, but because they take advantage of their skills by creating more occurrences of momentum, making them last longer, and using them to bounce back faster from streaks of unsuccessful performance. Thus, momentum is an important mediator of the effects of skill on performance.

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• Science of psychological phenomena and their testing.

  American Psychologist · 2024-05-06 · 5 citations

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  as proposed by the theory. Instead of the narrow focus on generalization to hypothetical populations, psychological phenomena and associated generalization could more productively be examined from the nine proposed perspectives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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• Non-consciously processed physical activity for survival versus consciously deliberated exercise for health

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2023-06-13 · 2 citations

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  Humans evolved to become dependent on physical activity for their survival, but they have not evolved to exercise today. Because survival in modern society is heavily reliant on conscious thinking, most people (54%) have evolved away from physical activity and become occasional exercisers. This transition from non-conscious to conscious processing prevents people from capitalizing on evolution's wisdom for survival and wellbeing as they consciously deliberate on the utility of health practices to achieve certain outcomes (e.g., weight loss). Unlike in early times, people today have a choice of not engaging in physical activity and yet surviving. As a result, they struggle with the question whether the gains from exercising are greater than losses from not doing it, weighing positive gains and losses against negative gains and losses. Such conscious deliberations, however, can easily be overridden by solving cognitive dissonance (e.g., "exercise is good for my health" vs. "I don't exercise") through conscious rationalizations and non-conscious dismissal. Today's exercise problem can only be solved by individually acquiring the mindset of early times of evolution when the initiation of physical activity was largely a matter of non-conscious thoughts and feelings.

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• Leisure and meaning in life

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2023-02-28 · 74 citations

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  How people engage in leisure is an important but frequently underappreciated aspect of meaning in life. Leisure activities range from highly engaging and meaningful to subjectively trivial. Leisure itself is largely defined by meaning: The essence of leisure lies less in the specific activity than in the subjective perception of freedom, choice, and intrinsic motivation. People desire their lives to be meaningful, and leisure activities offer varying degrees of satisfying the basic needs for meaning (here covered as purpose, value, efficacy, and self-worth). Leisure activities vary along multiple conceptual dimensions, such as active vs. passive, seeking vs. escaping, solitary vs. interpersonal, and we consider the implications of these for meaningfulness. The most common leisure activity in modern society, watching television, encapsulates some of the paradoxes of leisure and meaningfulness. The study of how leisure enhances meaning in life is rich and ripe for future research.

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• Replication and Reproducibility in Psychological, Medical and other Sciences

  Medical Research Archives · 2022-01-01

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  As there are no universal constants in psychological, medical and economic sciences, only constructive-phenomenon replications are meaningful. Yet, psychologists continue to perform direct replications, as evidenced by recent preregistered multilab attempts at exact replications of the ego depletion effect. Statistics are driving the replication movement into a ditch because of an overemphasis on the determination of statistical magnitude of effects while ignoring commonsense magnitude and other criteria for evaluating phenomena’s validity, reliability, and viability. The nature of the human mind and the variability of psychological phenomena pose difficult challenges for the scientific method and insurmountable obstacles for precise replications in psychological sciences. The situation is no better in medical and economic sciences. The interaction effect of person (genetics) and environment (lifestyle) calls for constructive replications to determine, for example, drugs’ efficacy as a function of group and individual differences. The vaccine-vaccination paradox is an interesting case because psychological and medical sciences meet at this intersection. In all fields, science advances by theory building and model expansion, not by replication tests of statistical hypotheses. Rigorous logical and theoretical analysis always precedes and guides good empirical tests. The nonexistence of an effect is not viable if it can withstand rigorous logical and theoretical analyses. Empirical studies are mainly evaluated for their theoretical relevance and importance, not their success or failure to exactly reproduce the original findings.

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• Toward a theory of conscious–nonconscious processing and getting hard (and easy) things done in everyday life.

  Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice · 2021-06-03 · 10 citations

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• Replication and the Establishment of Scientific Truth

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2020-09-16 · 18 citations

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  The idea of replication is based on the premise that there are permanent laws to be replicated and verified, and the scientific method is adequate for doing so. Scientific truth, however, is not absolute but relative to time and context, and the method used. Time and context are inextricably interwoven, in that time creates different contexts and contexts (e.g., Christmas Day vs. New Year’s Day) create different experiences of time, rendering psychological phenomena inherently variable. This means that internal and external conditions fluctuate and are different in a replication study vs. the original. Thus, a replication experiment is just another empirical investigation that has no special status in the establishment of scientific truth. It is not the final arbiter of whether or not something exists. In their pursuit of homogeneous external conditions, replications have ignored the homogeneity of internal conditions. There is not a single replication reported in the literature that would have shown participants’ feelings and thoughts—both conscious and nonconscious—to be identical to those of the original participants. Experimental instructions can create varying ratios of conscious over nonconscious processing from one study to another. Ironically, every replication is a failure at the fundamentals of human psychology. While patterns can be discovered, they are not permanent or unchangeable laws of human behavior to be proven by the pinpoint statistical verification through replication. As scientific knowledge in physics is temporary and incomplete, should it be any surprise that science can only provide “temporary winners” for psychological knowledge of human behavior?

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• Self-Controlled Practice to Achieve Neuro-Cognitive Engagement: Underlying Brain Processes to Enhance Cognitive-Motor Learning and Performance

  Journal of Motor Behavior · 2019-10-14 · 15 citations

  article

  While self-controlled practice has been shown to be an effective practice methodology, the neuro-cognitive correlates of its effectiveness are unclear. We investigated whether learners participating in self-controlled practice exhibit increased neuro-cognitive engagement compared to externally controlled practice. Two groups (self-controlled and yoked) of 16 participants practiced and performed a golf putting task over 3 days. Working memory engagement, central executive activity, and cortical activation were assessed via electroencephalography as indicators of neuro-cognitive engagement. The self-controlled group exhibited more consistent working memory engagement, and greater central executive activity, compared to the yoked group during practice. Relationships were also observed between neuro-cognitive engagement during self-controlled practice and performance improvement, indicating that self-controlled practice uniquely benefitted from increased neuro-cognitive engagement.

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• Human Mind: Both the Cause and Solution to the Global Pandemic of Physical Inactivity

  International Journal of Public Health Research · 2018-10-26 · 5 citations

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  Objective: To explain the global pandemic of physical inactivity. An innate human tendency to choose an alternative that leads to the same goal with the least amount of effort is a major obstacle for sustained physical activity. A path of least resistance for goal achievement is selected because it requires less effort and energy, causes less cognitive strain, and provides faster gratification. Physical activity, in contrast, demands cognitive and physical energy, is cognitively straining, and necessitates delay of gratification. On first glance, then, it is a small wonder that physical inactivity has become a global pandemic. Theory and Evidence: While the human mind, through its conscious and nonconscious processing, inherently works against physical activity, it can be harnessed to make sustained physical activity possible. Conscious processing works against exercise when it makes people think, “should or should I not go for a run/walk”? Nonconscious processing also works against exercise because it, in and of itself, is inclined to select a path of least resistance and immediate gratification (e.g., TV watching). Yet, nonconscious processing can be made to work for physical activity when exercise is continuously repeated as a response to a situational cue (e.g., sneakers placed next to a door) without cognitive deliberations. Constant repeats of the same physical activity strengthen the cue-behavior link and eventually make the behavior nonconsciously driven and automatic. Thus, paradoxically, nonconscious processing seeks to make demanding and effortful activities paths of least resistance through constant repeats of behavior. Conclusion: As exercise is more of a cognitive than physical battle, delegation of the decision to exercise to nonconscious processing increases the likelihood of sustained physical activity. But if the activity is not repeated with regularity, any decision to engage in physical activity has to rely on conscious thoughts, which, at best, can make people only “occasional” exercisers. Practical Implications: Conscious thoughts, however, can be used to serve nonconscious processing when one’s environment is rearranged to maximize situational cues for exercise and minimize cues for competing activities. Another important (conscious) strategy is to build an exercise infrastructure via if-then plans of when, where, how, and with whom to exercise. These implementation intentions quickly become nonconsciously operated and automatic, thus enhancing the likelihood of sustained physical activity. In this process, personal physicians can play a major role.

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• Conscious-Nonconscious Processing Explains Why Some People Exercise but Most Don’t

  Journal of nature and science · 2017-06-07 · 4 citations

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  Although it is well established by physiologists that exercise is the single best thing individuals can do for their health, most people are not regular exercisers. This failure poses an interesting but important question and challenge for psychological science. Why lack of success? Clearly, exercise is more a cognitive than physical battle. This paper reviews research from cognitive neuroscience to social psychology and proposes a theory in the form of a 3-stage model to explain why some succeed but most fail to become regular and habitual exercisers. The model elucidates how beginners, if successful, will progress on a continuum from fully conscious processing and little exercise (First Stage) to largely nonconscious processing and regular exercise (Third Stage). However, most beginners cannot get past the Second Stage, conscious-nonconscious-conscious (occasional exercise) , and therefore fail to reach the third stage where this behavior is mainly driven by situational and contextual cues. This failure is reflected in findings that most beginners cannot get through five weeks without a lapse. The major obstacle in the second stage emanates from the combination of activated interdependent psychological processes: the human tendency to follow the law of least effort, especially after self-control depletion from daily work, and threats to personal freedom. Exercise can only be understood in the temporal and social contexts associated with leisure time when most people are most likely to be able to engage in exercise activities. It is in this context that the interconnected conscious and nonconscious processes are activated. The ensuing battle within and between these processes prevents most beginners from moving to the third stage and regular exercise. Journal of Nature and Science (JNSCI), 3(6):e384, 2017

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Awards & honors

• Division Scholar Award (Distinguished University Professor),…
• Philipp Merrill Presidential Scholar Award 2018, U of Maryla…