Print ThisMindless Eating Challenge: Persuasive Mechanisms in Mobile Health Games
Mindless Eating Challenge, a mobile phone game for younger adolescents, rewards players’ good health habits and food choices. A study of this game investigates how strategies of persuasion in a game can promote healthy behaviors in daily life. The game uses eating tips, mobile phone snapshots of foods that players plan to eat, nurturing of virtual characters, and feedback from the system and from peers to promote good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.
Daniel R. Cosley, Ph.D.
Collin R. Payne, Ph.D.
John Pollak
Brian Wansink
News
| Grantee | Project |
Publication |
Title | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Cornell University
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Mindless Eating Challenge: Persuasive Mechanisms in Mobile Health Games | The Post-Standard |
Can a Virtual Pet Teach Kids?  |
11/18/2008 |
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Cornell University
|
Mindless Eating Challenge: Persuasive Mechanisms in Mobile Health Games | The Post-Standard |
Virtual Pets Encourage Canastota Students to Eat Healthy |
06/08/2009 |
Publications
Byrne, S., Gay, G., Pollak, J. P., Retelny, D., Gonzales, A. L., & Wansink, B. (2012). Caring for mobile phone based avatars can lead teenagers to eat breakfast. Journal of Children and Media, 6(1), 83-89.
Gay, G. (2009). Context-Aware Mobile Computing: Affordances of Space, Social Awareness, and Social Influence. Princeton, NJ: Morgan & Claypool Publishers.
Pollak, J. P., Gay, G., Byrne, S., Wagner, E., Retelny, D., & Humpfreys, L. (2010). It’s time to eat! Using mobile games to promote healthy eating. IEEE Pervasive Computing: Connected Youth, 9(3), 21-27.
Presentations
Byrne, S., Gay, G., Pollak, J.P., Retelny, D., Gonzales, A. L. & Wansink, B. (2010). When I eat so bad, my pet looks so sad: An initial test of the persuasive effect of feedback from a mobile phone virtual pet on adolescent breakfast intake. A paper accepted for presentation at the annual conference of the International Communication Association, Division: Children, Adolescents and the Media, Singapore.
Gay, G. & Pollak, J.P. (2010) Mood and health. Presented at Sanofi-Aventis.
Gay, G. (2010). Virtual reality and the use of new technologies for health interventions. Invited Presentation to NIH, Bethesda, MD.
Gay, G., Byrne, S. & Pollak, J.P. (2009). Social influence and the effects of feedback on adolescent eating behavior. Presented to Games for Health, Boston, MA.
Gay, G., Byrne, S. & Pollak, J.P. (2010) The use of cell phones to influence behavior. Panel Presentation to Games for Health, Boston, MA.