Work in Progress

Exploring the Impact of Role Model Avatars on Game Experience in Educational Games

Authors:

D. Fox HarrellAuthors Info & Claims

CHI PLAY '15: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

Pages 571 - 576

https://doi.org/10.1145/2793107.2810291

Published: 05 October 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Studies show that role models can boost academic performance. In this paper, we describe an experiment (N = 890) exploring the use of (a) scientist role models, (b) athlete role models and (c) simple geometric shapes, as game avatars. Using the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ), we find that over all participants, the use of avatars that looked like scientist and athlete role models led to highest flow and immersion. For female participants, the use of scientist avatars led to highest immersion and positive affect, and lowest tension and negative affect. The results here indicate that role model avatars have the potential to positively affect player game experience. This may especially be impactful for educational games, in which higher engagement could in turn influence learning outcomes.

References

[1]

Blumenfeld, P. C., Kempler, T. M., and Krajcik, J. S. Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments. In The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. 2005, 475--488.

[2]

Buunk, A. P., Peiró, J. M., and Griffioen, C. A positive role model may stimulate career-oriented behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 37 (2007), 1489--1500.

[3]

IJsselsteijn, W., De Kort, Y., Poels, K., Jurgelionis, A., and Bellotti, F. Characterising and Measuring User Experiences in Digital Games. International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology 620 (2007), 1--4.

[4]

Kao, D., and Harrell, D. F. Exploring construction, play, use of virtual identities in STEM learning. Jean Piaget Society Annual Conference (2015).

[5]

Kao, D., and Harrell, D. F. Mazzy: A STEM Learning Game. Foundations of Digital Games (2015).

[6]

Kao, D., and Harrell, D. F. Toward Evaluating the Impacts of Virtual Identities on STEM Learning. Foundations of Digital Games (2015).

[7]

Lockwood, P. "Someone like me can be successful?: Do college students need same-gender role models" Psychology of Women Quarterly 30, 1 (Mar. 2006), 36--46.

[8]

Lockwood, P., and Kunda, Z. Superstars and me: Predicting the impact of role models on the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, 1 (1997), 91--103.

[9]

Marx, D. M., and Goff, P. A. Clearing the air: the effect of experimenter race on target's test performance and subjective experience. The British journal of social psychology / the British Psychological Society 44 (2005), 645--657.

[10]

Marx, D. M., Ko, S. J., and Friedman, R. a. The Obama Effect: How a salient role model reduces race-based performance differences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45, 4 (July 2009), 953--956.

[11]

Marx, D. M., and Roman, J. S. Female Role Models: Protecting Women's Math Test Performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 (2002), 1183--1193.

[12]

Marx, D. M., Stapel, D. a., and Muller, D. We can do it: the interplay of construal orientation and social comparisons under threat. Journal of personality and social psychology 88, 3 (2005), 432--446.

[13]

Mcintyre, R. B., Lord, C. G., Gresky, D. M., Eyck, L. L. T., and Bond, C. F. A Social Impact Trend in the Effects of Role Models on Alleviating Women's Mathematics Stereotype Threat. Current Research in Social Psychology 10, 9 (2005), 1--26.

[14]

McIntyre, R. B., Paulson, R. M., and Lord, C. G. Alleviating women's mathematics stereotype threat through salience of group achievements. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 39, 1 (2003), 83--90.

[15]

Steele, C., and Aronson, J. Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans. Journal of personality and social psychology (1995).

[16]

Steele, C. M. Whistling Vivaldi and other clues to how stereotypes a'ect us. In Whistling Vivaldi. 2010.

Cited By

Baswedan ATokuhisa S(2024)The Adventure in Science Museum: AR Game Featuring Anthropomorphized Companion to Enhance Learning Experience in Science MuseumCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678802(18-23)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665463.3678802
Oyedokun OMubarrat SJoshi AMousas CKao D(2024)Exploring the Influence of Avatar Skin Tone in VR Educational GamesCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678799(227-234)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665463.3678799
Kao DMubarrat SJoshi APandita SMousas CLiang HRatan R(2024)Exploring how gender-anonymous voice avatars influence women’s performance in online computing group workInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2023.103146181(103146)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2023.103146
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Exploring the Impact of Role Model Avatars on Game Experience in Educational Games

Recommendations

Exploring the Impact of Avatar Color on Game Experience in Educational Games
CHI EA '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

The color red has been shown to hinder performance, motivation, and affect in a variety of contexts involving cognitively demanding tasks. Teams wearing red have been shown to impair the performance of opposing teams, present even in online gaming. ...
The Effects of Badges and Avatar Identification on Play and Making in Educational Games
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

In our study (N=2189), we divided participants into 6 badge conditions: 1) Role model badges (e.g., Einstein), 2) Personal interest badges (e.g., Movies), 3) Achievement badges (e.g., "Code King"), 4) Choice, 5) Choice with badges always visible, and 6) ...
The effects of anthropomorphic avatars vs. non-anthropomorphic avatars in a jumping game
FDG '19: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

Avatar identification is a topic of increasingly intense interest. This is largely because avatar identification can promote a wide variety of outcomes: game enjoyment, intrinsic motivation, quality of made artifacts, and more. Yet we still understand ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI PLAY '15: Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

October 2015

852 pages

ISBN:9781450334662

DOI:10.1145/2793107

General Chairs:
Anna L. Cox
University College London, UK
,
Paul Cairns
University of York, UK
,
Program Chairs:
Regina Bernhaupt
IRIT, France
,
Lennart Nacke
University of Waterloo, Canada

Copyright © 2015 Owner/Author.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 October 2015

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Work in progress

Funding Sources

Conference

CHI PLAY '15

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CHI PLAY '15: The annual symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play

October 5 - 7, 2015

London, United Kingdom

Acceptance Rates

CHI PLAY '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 40 of 144 submissions, 28%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 421 of 1,386 submissions, 30%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

17
Total Citations
View Citations
309
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)30
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3

Reflects downloads up to 07 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Baswedan ATokuhisa S(2024)The Adventure in Science Museum: AR Game Featuring Anthropomorphized Companion to Enhance Learning Experience in Science MuseumCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678802(18-23)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665463.3678802
Oyedokun OMubarrat SJoshi AMousas CKao D(2024)Exploring the Influence of Avatar Skin Tone in VR Educational GamesCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678799(227-234)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3665463.3678799
Kao DMubarrat SJoshi APandita SMousas CLiang HRatan R(2024)Exploring how gender-anonymous voice avatars influence women’s performance in online computing group workInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2023.103146181(103146)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2023.103146
Kerac JGolubović GMilić Keresteš NIlić T(2024)The Effects of Avatar Design on E-Learning: A ReviewAdvances in Design and Digital Communication V10.1007/978-3-031-77566-6_49(673-686)Online publication date: 24-Dec-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-77566-6_49
Löchtefeld MMøller FKyster LPetersen AJaqué SLarsen AZiadeh H(2023)FridgeSort - Improving Fridge Sorting behaviour to reduce Food Waste through a Mobile Serious GameProceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3626705.3627801(420-427)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626705.3627801
Wen RDubé A(2023)Design Principles for Digital Mathematical Games that Promote Positive Achievement Emotions and AchievementMathematical Cognition and Understanding10.1007/978-3-031-29195-1_8(151-171)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29195-1_8
Joshi AMousas CHarrell DKao D(2022)Exploring the Influence of Demographic Factors on Progression and Playtime in Educational GamesProceedings of the 17th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games10.1145/3555858.3555873(1-15)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1145/3555858.3555873
Fernández Galeote DLegaki NHamari J(2022)Avatar Identities and Climate Change Action in Video Games: Analysis of Mitigation and Adaptation PracticesProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517438(1-18)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517438
Berger VBurkhalter L(2022) Beyond one size fits all? An experimental study of the effects of stage‐specific interventions to promote ecological online food shopping Journal of Consumer Behaviour10.1002/cb.205421:5(1040-1056)Online publication date: 17-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2054
Pradantyo RBirk MBateman S(2021)How the Visual Design of Video Game Antagonists Affects Perception of MoralityFrontiers in Computer Science10.3389/fcomp.2021.5317133Online publication date: 16-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomp.2021.531713
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten