Mediated enactive experience versus perceived mastery experience: An enhancing mechanism versus a mediator of character attachment and internal political efficacy in serious games

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate whether mediated enactive mastery experiences provided by a serious game could enhance players’ internal political efficacy (IPE) and further, to examine a path model of how character attachment and pretest IPE might influence perceived mastery experience and posttest IPE. A serious game that incorporates the enactive mastery experience and includes inventories of the measured variables was developed using Adobe Flash and JavaScript. One hundred thirteen college students participated in this study. The results of repeated measure analysis of variance revealed that the participants improved their IPE after playing the game, suggesting that the employed enactive mastery experience is effective. Moreover, results of structural equation modeling suggest that perceived mastery experience is an important mediator of character attachment and posttest IPE as well as a mediator of pretest IPE and posttest IPE. The findings of this study shed light on how to incorporate effective psychological mechanisms to enhance IPE in serious games.