The purpose of this study is to examine the effects and persuasive mechanisms of expository and narrative HPV vaccine messages targeted toward young men. The researcher used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HPV facts for men as a framework for the expository message condition. He also created two similar but distinct narratives that focused on HPV and men. The first narrative was informed by narrative persuasion studies in the social sciences and was labeled the academic narrative. The second narrative incorporated important elements of storytelling from literary theory and was labeled the classic narrative. A comparison condition, which presented a testimonial from a testicular cancer survivor, was also employed to compare against the effectiveness of the three experimental conditions. In the experiment, 258 men ages 18-26 were assigned randomly to the expository, academic narrative, classic narrative, or comparison conditions. Outcome measures related to the persuasive effects of the messages were attitudes toward talking to healthcare providers about the HPV vaccine and receptiveness to the HPV vaccine. Outcome measures related to the persuasive mechanisms of expository messages were argument strength, source credibility, and emotional arousal. Outcome measures related to the persuasive mechanisms of narrative messages were perceived realism, transportation, identification, and emotional arousal. Hypotheses predicted that argument strength and source credibility would predict changes in knowledge, attitudes, and vaccine receptiveness in the expository condition, whereas perceived realism, transportation, and identification would predict similar changes in the narrative conditions. An additional hypothesis predicted that emotional arousal would affect the persuasion process differently in the expository and narrative conditions. Results indicated that transportation, identification, and emotional arousal were stronger in the narrative conditions, but these variables did not predict persuasive outcomes. Conversely, perceived realism and source credibility had unexpected persuasive effects in both expository and narrative conditions. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.

This study investigates the relationship between social learning and perceived realism in the context of an entertainment media text, the 2015 movie San Andreas. As a fictional natural disaster movie, this film depicts several safety and survival techniques that could potentially be observed and adopted by audience members should they face a similar situation (i.e. major earthquake). While the majority of these techniques align with professionally recommended behaviors, a few are misleading. This study investigates the perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intentions different groups of audience members hold concerning the behaviors they observed in the film. Participants were grouped by geologically-based knowledge levels and levels of perceived realism. While the findings of this study reveal minimal differences based on knowledge and perceived realism, results clearly show that the film triggered high levels of curiosity and thinking about earthquakes and earthquake safety across the board. Furthermore, all audience members appeared to be persuaded on both a conscious and even more so on a subconscious level to behave as the characters in the film did, assuming the consequences of those actions were positive. These findings suggest that entertainment media texts can be a powerful educational and persuasive tool.

This study investigates the relationship between social learning and perceived realism in the context of an entertainment media text, the 2015 movie San Andreas. As a fictional natural disaster movie, this film depicts several safety and survival techniques that could potentially be observed and adopted by audience members should they face a similar situation (i.e. major earthquake). While the majority of these techniques align with professionally recommended behaviors, a few are misleading. This study investigates the perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral intentions different groups of audience members hold concerning the behaviors they observed in the film. Participants were grouped by geologically-based knowledge levels and levels of perceived realism. While the findings of this study reveal minimal differences based on knowledge and perceived realism, results clearly show that the film triggered high levels of curiosity and thinking about earthquakes and earthquake safety across the board. Furthermore, all audience members appeared to be persuaded on both a conscious and even more so on a subconscious level to behave as the characters in the film did, assuming the consequences of those actions were positive. These findings suggest that entertainment media texts can be a powerful educational and persuasive tool.

Humans use creativity and manual dexterity to create things, usually in a labor-intensive process. Procedural content generation (PCG) is an approach where computers do most of the manual work of creating virtual objects, while a human leads the creative process. One problem with PCG is that created objects tend to look too perfect and artificial, leading to research into simulating the aging process of created virtual objects. Simulating the growth of living organisms such as lichens on existing virtual objects has been a focus of research. Most previous techniques lack a clear evaluation of the realism of the results. In this thesis, a lichen growth simulation is implemented and evaluated in terms of perceived realism. Specifically, the target of the simulation is lichen growth on horizontal stone surfaces represented using a set of textures. The lichen growth simulation is slow but robust and flexible, capable of generating a wide range of output textures. 75 participants were recruited among university students and video game industry professionals, asked to compare the realism of lichens generated with different parameter settings. The investigated parameters are the scale of the lichens, the compactness of the lichens, and the number of lichen clusters (density). Participants perceived surfaces with a dense or medium-dense cover of small scale, semi-compact lichen clusters as the most realistic, while surfaces with a sparse cover of large scale, very compact or very lacy lichen clusters were perceived as the least realistic. The lichens perceived as the most realistic are also among the most computationally expensive to produce. This outcome tells us that there is a trade-off between realism and simulation time in the lichen growth simulation. The simulation is able to generate a wide range of lichen appearances, though the speed of the simulation can be greatly improved in multiple ways. / Människor använder kreativitet och manuell färdighet för att skapa saker, vanligtvis i en arbetsintensiv process. Procedurell innehållsgenerering (eng. PCG) är ett tillvägagångssätt där datorer gör majoriteten av det manuella arbetet i skapandet av virtuella objekt, och en människa leder den kreativa processen. Ett problem med PCG är att de skapade objekten tenderar att ha ett för nytt och artificiellt utseende, vilket har lett till forskning kring att simulera åldrandeprocessen för virtuella objekt. Forskning har bland annat fokuserat på att simulera tillväxten av levande organismer såsom lavar på existerande virtuella objekt. Flera tidigare tekniker saknar en tydlig evaluering av resultatens realism. I denna studie implementeras en lavtillväxtsimulering som evalueras med avseende på upplevd realism. Simuleringens mål är specifikt att simulera lavar på horisontella stenytor representerade av en uppsättning texturer. Simuleringen är långsam men robust och flexibel, och kapabel till att generera ett brett omfång av resultat. 75 deltagare rekryterades bland universitetsstudenter och bland arbetare i datorspelsindustrin, och ombads jämföra realismen hos lavar genererade med olika parameterinställningar. De undersökta parametrarna är skalan på lavarna, kompaktheten på lavarna och antalet lavar (densitet). Deltagarna upplevde att ytor med hög och mellanhög densitet av småskaliga semikompakta lavar var mest realistiska, medan ytor med låg densitet av storskaliga kompakta eller mycket utspridda lavar upplevdes som minst realistiska. De lavar som upplevdes vara mest realistiska är också bland de beräkningsmässigt dyraste att generera. Detta resultat visar att det finns en avvägning mellan realism och simuleringstid i lavtillväxtsimuleringen. Simuleringen kan generera ett brett omfång av lavutseenden, men simuleringens snabbhet kan förbättras på flera sätt.

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Abstract. Autonomous agents, also known as AI agents, are staples in modern video games. They take a lot of roles, everything from being quest-givers in roleplaying games, to opposing forces in action- and shooter games. Crafting an AI that is not only easy to create, but also retains humanlike and believable behavior, has always represented a challenge to the development industry, and has in several cases ended up with open world games using AI systems that limit the AI agents to simple moving patterns. In this thesis, a form of AI systems more commonly used in simulation games such as The Sims video game series, are taken and implemented in an environment that could possibly be seen in an open world game. After the implementation, a set of tests were performed on a group of testers which resulted in the insight that a majority of the testers, when asked to compare their experience to other games, found this implementation to feel more lifelike and realistic.

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