Nov 04, 2015 07:08 PM EST By J Dionne, UniversityHerald Reporter

Playing a life simulation game like Second Life or The Sims could help improve health and exercise habits, according to a recent study.

Researchers from Penn State University found that customizing an avatar to better resemble its human user may lead to improved health and exercise behaviors, according to a team of researchers.

"There's an emerging body of research that suggests that avatars in virtual environments are an effective way to encourage people to be more healthy," T. Franklin Waddell, a doctoral candidate in mass communications, said in a statement. "What our study was trying to do was finding out why avatars have these effects and also to determine if avatars can encourage people to be healthy, particularly encourage those who might have rather low interest in exercising and healthy eating."

For the study, researchers collected and analyzed data from more than 130 people. They had the participants customize an avatar in Second Life, a popular virtual reality environment that allows users to customize their avatars in a number of ways. They were then assigned to build either a same-sex avatar, or an opposite sex avatar. Another group of participants could see their own image on a small separate screen as they customized their avatar.

They found that people who customized their avatars to match their offline gender -- a task the researchers used to test the similarity of the avatar -- were more likely to have better exercise intentions and choose better health behaviors than ones who created an avatar of the opposite sex.

After customizing their avatars, both people who were already health-conscious and those who were less likely to think about health chose healthier intentions, such as selecting coupons for a fitness club rather than coupons for a fast food restaurant, as compensation for customizing their avatars.

"Our other research has shown that customizing avatars can make users feel more agentic and take charge of their welfare," said researcher S. Shyam Sundar. "This study shows that even individuals who are not normally health-conscious are motivated by customizing a same-sex avatar to better take care of their health."

The findings are detailed in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

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