Immortal virtual behaviours in a video game lead to increased moral sensitivity

Science is on video games side. On the website Kotaku UK it has been mentioned after scientists across New York, Michigan and Texas tested gamers they observed they were more morally sensitive. This contradicts that games could have prosocial consequence.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo had 185 participants playing two different video game scenarios- either as a terrorist or as a peacekeeper. It seems that those who played terrorists were asked to recall what real-life acts induced guilt and the peacekeepers were asked to recall which acts didn’t make them feel guilty. A 30 item moral foundations questionnaire followed.

“An American who played a violent game ‘as a terrorist’ would likely consider his avatar’s unjust and violent behaviour — violations of the fairness/reciprocity and harm/care domains — to be more immoral than when he or she performed the same acts in the role of a ‘UN peacekeeper,’” Grizzard said.

The study found significant positive correlations between video-game guilt and the moral foundations violated during game play. The limitations of this study are researchers have associated guilt with terrorist actions (and lack of guilt with the heroes), This might have shaded the lens with which they viewed their actions during the game.

This is the latest from a series of studies that discusses the impact of violent media on its users. Since two high school students rampaged through the halls of Columbine High School, there have been various debates about whether violent video games lead to violent behaviour.

An August 2013 study argues that violent video games do not cause high risks, while president Obama puts a call out for more comprehensive research on this subject.

“Several researchers have demonstrated that the virtual behaviours committed in a video game can elicit feelings of guilt. Researchers have proposed that such guilt could have prosocial consequences. However, this proposition has not been supported with empirical evidence. The current study examined this issue in a 2×2 (video game play vs. real world recollection×guilt vs. control) experiment. Participants were first randomly assigned to either play a video game or complete a memory recall task. Next, participants were randomly assigned to either a guilt-inducing condition (game play as a terrorist/recall of acts that induce guilt) or a control condition (game play as a UN soldier/recall of acts that do not induce guilt).

Results of the study indicate several important findings. First, the current results replicate previous research indicating that immoral virtual behaviours are capable of eliciting guilt. Second, and more importantly, the guilt elicited by game play led to intuition-specific increases in the salience of violated moral foundations. These findings indicate that committing “immoral” virtual behaviours in a video game can lead to increased moral sensitivity of the player. The potential prosocial benefits of these findings are discussed.”

 

http://www.boogames.eu/category/news/