To Kill or Not to Kill – An experimental test of moral Decision-Making in gaming

Commercial video game titles with meaningful and morally relevant storylines are becoming increasingly popular and an intensely researched topic for entertainment scholars. In line with this research, the current study investigates behavioral, emotional, and personality patterns of moral decision-making in gaming with a special emphasis on selected contextual factors. In the current laboratory experiment, a total of N = 101 participants played four chapters of Detroit: Become Human for approx. 55 min. A maximum of 13 moral decisions had to be made either under time pressure or not. Before playing, participants were assigned to one of three conditions (i.e., playing morally vs. immorally framed character vs. no framing/control condition). As expected, players generally preferred to act morally regardless of character framing. Time pressure further increased the proportion of moral (vs. immoral) decision-making. Our results underline that moral decision-making is dependent on specific contexts and that morality theories can be applied to virtual gaming scenarios.