Perspective taking and decision-making in educational game play: A mixed-methods study

ABSTRACT

Video games have the potential to be contexts for moral learning. We investigated whether Quandary, a video game designed to promote ethical thinking and moral considerations for decision-making, would help promote positive skills such as perspective taking and empathy in adolescents. We examined the effect of playing Quandary on 131 middle school students on self-reported measures of moral thinking via mixed-method randomized control trials. In addition, we conducted qualitative analyses of one-on-one participant interviews and short-answer responses to capture experiences and reflections from playing Quandary, as well as the depth in which students across conditions responded to the interview questions. We found that short-term quantitative indicators did not show change across conditions; however, qualitative analyses revealed thematic responses that are consistent with the core components of the Quandary game, and that students in the Quandary condition showed a greater depth of response to interview questions. This work is a first step in exploring the potential for virtual game play on children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development.

Notes

¹The appropriateness of the use of this statistic is questionable because the expected value of 52% of our cells was less than five. We therefore report this statistic for descriptive purposes only.

²One of the authors (MUB) was involved in the development of Quandary.

³Post-survey interviews showed that students had difficulties with interpreting the reverse-coded items in the scale.