Collaborative Research: Media Characters: The Unhidden Persuaders in Food Marketing to Children

儿童观看电视节目时，经常会有与熟悉角色的长时间接触。与以往任何一个科技时代不同，这些角色现在出现在许多不同类型的媒体中，包括电视节目和广告、电脑游戏和移动的应用程序。除了娱乐和教育观众，这些角色还向儿童出售，包括与困扰我们国家的儿童肥胖危机有关的不健康食品。虽然像这样的角色多年来一直被用作营销工具，但人们对这种营销的有效程度或儿童易受其影响的具体条件知之甚少。研究人员将测试他们的理论，即儿童与媒体人物形成的片面的、带有情感色彩的友谊--被称为准社会关系--是他们影响的核心。研究人员将开发和验证一个评估量表，用于测量准社会关系的强度，并使用它来确定哪些因素影响关系的大小，并预测媒体角色对儿童偏好影响的可能性。研究人员将使用一种实验方法，让儿童与一个新的媒体角色互动，以探索准社会关系如何形成的动态，以及在什么情况下它们会产生强烈的影响。他们将描述这个过程在3至8岁之间的变化程度。结构方程模型将被用来计算不同因素对准社会关系和性格动机的影响程度。如果不对肥胖危机的根本原因进行研究，我们孩子的未来就处于危险之中。现在，美国儿童的预期寿命比他们的父母短。媒体人物可能在这场流行病中扮演了一个不加掩饰的角色。然而，这些同样的人物也可能通过推广更健康的食物来改变儿童的食物选择和饮食模式。从这个项目中获得的知识可以帮助科学家了解媒体人物在儿童肥胖危机中扮演的重要角色。然后，这些信息可以用来帮助父母在超市和餐馆为他们的孩子做出健康的决定，帮助企业更明智地使用他们的媒体角色，并向立法者通报可以改善后代健康和福祉的政策。

Children's television viewing often involves extended experiences with familiar characters. Unlike any previous technological age, these characters are now present in many different kinds of media, including television programs and advertisements, computer games, and mobile Apps. In addition to entertaining and teaching viewers, these characters also sell to children, including unhealthy foods that have been linked to the childhood obesity crisis that plagues our nation. While characters such as these have been used as marketing tools for many years, little is known about the extent to which this marketing is effective, or the specific conditions under which children are susceptible to its influence. The investigators will test their theory that the existence of one-sided, emotionally-tinged friendships that children form with media characters--known as parasocial relationships--are central to their influence. The researchers will develop and validate an assessment scale for measuring the strength of parasocial relationships and use it to determine what factors influence relationship magnitude and predict the likelihood of media character influences on children's preferences. The investigators will use an experimental method in which children interact with a novel media character to explore the dynamics of how parasocial relationships form and under what circumstances they lead to strong influence. They will characterize the extent to which this process varies between 3 and 8 years of age. Structural equation modeling will be used to calculate the effect magnitude of different factors on parasocial relationships and character motivation. Without research about the underlying reasons for the obesity crisis, the future of our children is in peril. US children are now expected to have shorter life spans than their parents. Media characters may be playing an unhidden role in this epidemic. However, these same characters may also be able to change children's food choices and eating patterns by promoting healthier foods. The knowledge that will be gained from this project can help scientists understand the important role that media characters are playing in the childhood obesity crisis. This information can then be used to help parents make healthy decisions for their children in supermarkets and restaurants, to help businesses use their media characters more wisely, and to inform legislators about the kinds of policies that can improve the health and well being of future generations.