Moral Foundations Theory and Moral Reasoning in Video Game Play: Using Real-Life Morality in a Game Context

Abstract

Although research has indicated that moral decisions are made during video game play, less research has examined moral reasoning during play. Using a think-aloud protocol, participants’ decisions and reasoning were recorded during game play and coded as either strategic or moral. Players’ reasoning was also coded using Moral Foundations Theory. Results indicated an almost equal percentage of strategic and moral reasoning; the salience of several individual moral foundations predicted moral reasoning during play. Video game experience was positively related to the use of moral reasoning, which can be explained by relating reasoning to rational and experiential processing during game play.

Notes

¹ In order to ensure that there were no significant differences based on data collection site, we ran each statistical analysis for each sample. Although there were less statistically significant relationships when using site 2 data only, these relationships were in the same direction as those using site 1 data, and the significant relationships in the site 1 data were robust to the addition of site 2 data. Thus, we suspect differences are due to a power issue, and not differences in terms of data collection site.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marina Krcmar

Marina Krcmar (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a professor at Wake Forest University. Her research focuses on how children and adolescents use and are affected by media; recent work has focused on video games as well as media targeting very young children.

Drew P. Cingel

Drew P. Cingel (M.A., Wake Forest University) is a doctoral candidate in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University. His areas of research include adolescent identity development and social media use, children’s tablet computer use, and media and morality.