ABSTRACT
Many tasks in life are important, but not necessarily appealing. Of such tasks, Mary Poppins had some wise advice, declaring that ‘‘a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.’’ What’s true of swallowing medicine is also true of other activities that are usually regarded as uninviting-such as doing schoolwork or undergoing on-the-job training or being subjected to advertising. In interactive media, that spoonful of sugar is an infusion of entertainment content, and it helps many less-than-welcome things go down without objection.
