Another Study Suggests Acting Immorally In Video Games Actually Makes Players More Moral

Studies

from the then-i-must-be-a-saint dept

As the evolution of video games as a major entertainment medium marches on, you would expect to see more and more studies done as to their effects. And, since the chief topic among those having this conversation seems to center around the effect of violence in games, that’s where much of the focus of these studies is going to go. Now, we’ve already discussed one study that linked violent video games and the so-called Macbeth Effect, in which the gamer feels the need to cleanse themselves of the wrong-doing with a conversely benevolent action. That study was important because it demonstrated that the effect of violent games might have the opposite effect of the all-to-prevalent theory that virtual violence begets real-life violence.

A recent study appears to boil this down even further, indicating that instead of feeling any kind of desensitizing effect, immoral actions taken in video games produce a more sensitive, compassionate person.

A study led by Matthew Grizzard, assistant professor in the department of communication at the University at Buffalo, reaffirmed previous research saying that committing immoral acts in games can cause players to feel guilt. Moreover, the study found that players would become more sensitive to the specific moral codes that they violated while playing — and according to Grizzard and his co-authors, that may eventually lead players to practice prosocial behavior (that is, voluntary behavior for the benefit of other people).

The study was done at an unnamed Midwestern university, sampling nearly 200 individuals for testing purposes. The game used was Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, an older game that was previously used in a study that first tried to measure guilt in the gaming population. The methodology used by several researchers from major universities is interesting, to say the least.

First, the researchers randomly assigned the participants to play a game or perform a memory recall task. They randomly assigned the gaming segment to play Cold War Crisis in two ways: Either they would play as terrorists (the “guilt condition”), or as U.N. peacekeepers in the “control condition.” The researchers also split the memory recall participants into two groups: They asked the guilt condition people to write about a time in which they felt particularly guilty, while they requested the control condition folks to write about a normal day.

What they found is that feelings of guilt were more profound in those gamers who played as terrorists compared with those that played as peacekeepers. The rationale at work is that terrorists are unjustified in killing the U.N. characters, but not vice versa. What that demonstrates is that players taking what they deem to be immoral actions within a virtual environment are emotionally stimulated in thinking about those actions and develop thoughts and opinions based on those actions, building generally towards empathy through guilt. Coupled with other research, this is important.

Research has shown that guilt and increased moral sensitivity in real life often lead to prosocial behavior. Thus, the study’s authors concluded, there’s some likelihood that the same could be true for guilt resulting from immoral virtual behavior. In other words, playing violent games can make you feel guilty, which may cause you to do nice things for other people.

It’s important to note that still other research has shown that with increased play at relatively high rates, these feelings of guilt tend to lessen over time. That likely has more to do with the player’s comfort level in accepting that their actions are all just part of a game and having already settled their feelings on those actions. In the meantime, for the vast majority of gamers who play games at what we’d consider normal intervals, violence in games may actually lead to pro-social behavior rather than the stereotype result that’s blasted around our media.

Filed Under: morality, video games, violence