These results should be interpreted cautiously due to
several limitations. First, our data were collected from
a small sample of participants who were independent
living Caucasian older adults in relatively good health,
and of moderately high socioeconomic status; results need
replication and generalizability may be limited. Second, our
sample was disproportionally women, thus making it difficult
to draw accurate conclusions about the moderating effects of
social facilitation and competition on exercise performance
in men. Additionally, the participants were engaging in a
larger clinical trial, and as such had been instructed previously
to work toward increasing their exercise behavior; thus
it is possible that the confounding of time in the trial and
the sequential change in the virtual reality conditions could
have obscured results. However, the differential response of
the more and less competitiveness subgroups is compelling,
since both were given the same instruction at the start of the
larger trial.