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

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 (N = 87) were randomly assigned to watch a 15-min animated video (designed for an existing AVG) in which the main characters had an overweight/obese, or average∗, or athletic slim body shape (all other elements were identical). Children’s NI, NE, WI, and AVG and physical activity (PA) motivation were then assessed.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.∗The term average in this sense is not in reference to the national average body weight, but rather an average of the body weights represented in conditions A and C.

The effect of animated Sci-Fi characters’ racial presentation on narrative engagement, wishful identification, and physical activity intention among children

“…Both variables demonstrate animated narratives’ potential to bring about health changes among children. Although narrative engagement has been shown to act as a mediator previously in studies of animation effects on physical activity ( Alon et al, 2021 ; Sousa et al, 2020 ), this is the first time its mediation effect has been demonstrated within the context of the racial presentation of an animated character. Likewise, wishful identification mediated the effect between the character’s racial presentation and intention to perform healthy behavior.…”

“…The narrative engagement scale can be particularly useful for measurement of visual narratives such as animations and movies. Additionally, in previous work, it had good internal consistency among children and was found to mediate the narrative influence on exercise motivation ( Alon et al, 2021 ), especially when the lead narrative characters’ body shapes were made similar to children. Through narrative engagement, people’s knowledge, attitude, and behaviors can be changed through expanding the range of their imagined possible selves.…”

“…Of the 86 participants who completed the study, we removed 13 children’s responses because their answers were flagged for lacking validity, leaving 73 participants for analysis. We conducted a post hoc power analysis using G*Power ( Faul et al, 2009 ) and a similar study published previously ( Alon et al, 2021 ) to determine whether our final N would be sufficient to detect a significant difference between the three conditions for a large effect size (partial η 2 = 0.14), and found that our sample size would provide a power of 90% (at α = 0.05).…”

“…A sample item is, “During the story, my body was in the room, but my mind was in the story world” (Cronbach’s α = 0.70). We used a measure validated in previous research that made minor wording changes to ensure that children in this age group fully understood the questions ( Alon et al, 2021 ).…”

“…The 5-item Physical Activity Intention scale was adopted from a validated questionnaire measuring children’s motivation for undertaking exercise ( Alon et al, 2021 ). Items included: (If there is an active video game with this story as its plot, what would you do?)…”