Many, if not most of us, find it difficult to exercise regularly and get the 150 minutes of physical activity a week guidelines recommend.

Finding the motivation to work out consistently is perhaps the hardest part of sticking to an exercise program. Though certain personality traits are associated with negative health behaviors such as drinking and smoking, few studies have looked at if and how personality traits can affect positive behavior like sticking to a fitness routine.

People scoring high in extraversion enjoyed high-intensity sports with others. Those who were more neurotic tended to prefer to exercise alone, perhaps by jogging.

Researchers from University College, London decided to examine five personality traits to see whether they were related to what types of exercise people enjoyed and how much they worked out.

The idea was that someone's personality could affect the types of exercise they enjoy and offer clues as to ways get people to stick to an exercise program.

If people find physical activities they like, it can motivate them to get moving, the senior author of the study, Paul Burgess, a faculty member at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College, said in a statement. Ideally, if you find a form of exercise you like, doing it will come naturally. As he put it, “After all, we don't have to nag dogs to go for a walk!”

Eighty-six people completed an online questionnaire about how stressed they were feeling. Then, they answered another survey designed to uncover their general personality style at the start. Participants were also tested in a lab to determine their level of physical fitness.

Study participants' personalities were evaluated using the Big Five personality traits — Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (OCEAN) — and they were divided into two groups.

One group was assigned to an eight-week cycling and strength training program; the other served as a control group and given a 10-minute weekly stretching routine, but otherwise continued with their usual lifestyle.

People in the intervention group were asked to rate their enjoyment of each training session on a scale of one (not enjoyable) to seven (very enjoyable). The kind of exercise someone enjoyed the most and how much they exercised were both affected by personality, according to the results from the intervention group.

People scoring high in extraversion enjoyed high-intensity sports with others, such as team sports. Those who were more neurotic tended to prefer to exercise alone, perhaps by jogging. They enjoyed high intensity workouts as well, but on their own timetable so they could take breaks as they wished.

“After all, we don't have to nag dogs to go for a walk!”

All participants took the online questionnaire about stress again at the end of the study. Both the control and intervention groups had reported similar levels of stress at baseline; but participants in the intervention group, especially those who were more neurotic, indicated they felt less stress compared to control group members at the end of the study.

It's likely no surprise that people who were more conscientious exercised whether they enjoyed it or not. They also had better general fitness and more weekly hours of physical activity. Openness and agreeableness did not seem to predict fitness levels.

“This is good news! Those who benefit the most from a reduction in stress respond very well to exercise,” said Flaminia Ronca, lead author on the study and a faculty member at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health at University College.

The study was published in Frontiers in Psychology.