ArticleFrontiers in psychology2021
What Type of Body Shape Moves Children? An Experimental Exploration of the Impact of Narrative Cartoon Character Body Shape on Children's Narrative Engagement, Wishful Identification, and Exercise Motivation.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 4 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of narratives and active video games among black and hispanic children with overweight and obesity: a randomized controlled trial.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2025Trial
- The effect of animated Sci-Fi characters' racial presentation on narrative engagement, wishful identification, and physical activity intention among children.The Journal of communication · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe incorporation of narratives helps to enhance children's engagement in active video games (AVGs), thus increasing moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Specific narrative elements, such as the visual representation of the characters' body shape, have been rarely manipulated to explore their role in modulating children's narrative engagement (NE) and exercise motivation.
objectiveTo investigate the effects of character body shape manipulation (overweight/obese, average, or athletic slim) on children's narrative immersion (NI), NE, wishful identification (WI), as well as their mediating effect on AVG and PA motivation.
methodsChildren ages 8-12 years old (
resultsControlling for social desirability, the analysis indicated that participants with a BMI of greater than the 75th percentile had a significantly higher NI, NE, WI, and PA motivation when video characters were set to the overweight/obese condition, than they did for video characters set to the average or athletic slim conditions. On the other hand, children of equal or less than the 75th percentile exposed to the average character body condition had a greater NE, WI, and PA motivation than overweight/obese or athletic slim conditions. A mediation analysis with structural equation modeling indicated that NE mediated the effect between character body shape and AVG and PA motivation.
conclusionNarrative cartoon characters that mirror the target participant's body shape can increase NE, which in turn mediates AVG and PA motivation. Content producers should identify optimal strategies in character body shape design to encourage children of different weight status to participate in PA with engaging stories to maximize health narratives' persuasive potentials.
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Registered trials
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