Ethical Behaviour and Moral Decision Making within Virtual Worlds

This thesis explores how immersion in a virtual world (video games and virtual reality) affects moral decision making. In this work, two studies were conducted to explore the effects of each of these virtual worlds. To explore the effects of immersion in video games, participants were given one of two surveys. One survey focused on their personal moral decision making, and the other focused on their video game characters moral decision making. Little difference was seen between the choices in each survey, saving the majority was the most significant and common choice made, and the immersion of their video game characters proved to have no effect on their moral decision making. This suggests the immersion as their characters has no affect on their moral decision making within hypothetical moral dilemmas. To explore the effects of immersion in virtual reality, two well-known moral dilemmas known as the “Trolley Problem” and the “Fat Man Problem” were recreated for the study, and contained several variations. A variety of factors that may influence the moral decision making were considered, such as the characters used in the dilemmas, gender differences, involvement and more. A majority of participants made similar choices throughout the “Trolley Problem” with slight variations seen in the “Fat Man Problem”. The driving factor for these moral decisions appeared to be the character involved and the individuals attitude towards the simulation. The main difference found throughout these studies was between the choices made in hypothetical dilemmas (first study) and practical dilemmas (second study), due to the level of immersion, involvement, and attitudes of the participants