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Behavior, Psychology and Sociology

Obesity and individual performance: the case of eSports

International Journal of Obesity volume 46, pages 1518–1526 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives

The study considers the problem of the inclusion of people with obesity in the context of the growing role of computer-based work. Negative stereotypes about people with obesity still hold even when they are irrelevant in tasks that require little physical activity.

Subjects/Methods

Using data from the realm of competitive video gaming (eSports) and image recognition-based metric of body mass index metric derived from artificial intelligence, we examine the individual performance depending on weight. The sample includes 821 players and 127,533 player performance observations.

Results

For shorter tasks, individuals with normal weight performed better than individuals with obesity. For longer tasks, however, people with Class III (severe) obesity outperformed all others, and their advantage increased with task duration.

Conclusions

Our findings shed light on an understanding of how actually body features are related to objective individual performance in a competitive context.

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Fig. 1: Estimated BMI for selected images.
Fig. 2: Performance change over match duration.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study is publicly available in HarvardDataVerse, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/M8ELYQ. We deleted all information that identified individuals.

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Acknowledgements

For assisting us in getting the data we are thankful to Eduard Gabdukaev.

Funding

Iuliia Naidenova and Petr Parshakov acknowledge the support of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. HSE University, Perm, Russia

    Petr Parshakov & Iuliia Naidenova

  2. HSE University, Moscow, Russia

    Arthur Assanskiy

  3. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

    Cornel Nesseler

Authors
  1. Petr Parshakov
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  2. Iuliia Naidenova
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  3. Arthur Assanskiy
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  4. Cornel Nesseler
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All authors contributed equally to this study and share the responsibility for its content.

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Correspondence to Cornel Nesseler.

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Appendix

Appendix

Fig. 1A
figure a

Density plot for BMI.

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Fig. 1B
figure b

Density plot for player's rating.

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Fig. 1C
figure c

Density plot for player's age.

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Fig. 1D
figure d

Density plot for number of rounds.

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Parshakov, P., Naidenova, I., Assanskiy, A. et al. Obesity and individual performance: the case of eSports. Int J Obes 46, 1518–1526 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-022-01142-y

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