Moral Disengagement in Violent Video Games
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Moral Disengagement in Violent Video Games
Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916
ORIGINAL ART ICLE
It’s Okay to Shoot a Character: Moral Disengagement in Violent Video Games Tilo Hartmann & Peter Vorderer
Department of Communication Science, Center for Advanced Media Research Amsterdam, VU-Free University
Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
What makes virtual violence enjoyable rather than aversive? Two 2×2 experiments tested the assumption that moral
disengagement cues provided by a violent video game’s narrative and game play lessen users’ guilt and negative affect,
which would otherwise undermine players’ enjoyment of the game. Experiment 1 found that users’ familiarity with the
violent game reduced guilt and negative affect, and enhanced enjoyment, whereas opponents’ nonhuman outer
appearance and blameworthiness had no effect. Experiment 2 found that fighting for a just purpose, perceiving less
mayhem, and framing the overall situation as ‘‘just a game’’ or ‘‘just an experiment’’ reduced guilt and negative affect,
whereas the distorted portrayal of consequences did not. Effects on game enjoyment were mixed and suggest that
moral disengagement cues may both foster and diminish game enjoyment.
doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2009.01459.x
Playing video games has become one of the most popular leisure activities among youth (Smith, 2006). Violent video
games, particularly first-person-shooters like Half-Life II or Doom3, are among the best-selling video games. Male
adolescents are especially prone to play violent video games (Hartmann & Klimmt, 2006; Jansz, 2005). Violent games
have been criticized and praised both in society and in science. Critics’ biggest concern is that violent games could
make their user more aggressive.
Indeed, abundant research finds evidence that playing violent games increases short-term aggressive cognitions,
feelings, and behavioral intentions (Anderson, 2004). Users easily perceive computer-mediated characters as social
beings (Scholl & Tremoulet, 2005). Accordingly, research finds that aggressive video game play stimulates the same
brain activity as real-life aggression does (Weber, Ritterfeld, & Mathiak, 2006). With this in mind, it seems immoral to play
violent games, as the virtual violence appears to have serious consequences (Elton, 2000). Those who enjoy playing
violent video games, however, often say that they feel no wrong committing virtual violence (Ladas, 2002). Rather, they
highlight their enjoyment from playing violent games (Jansz, 2005).
Corresponding author: Tilo Hartmann; e-mail: t.hartmann@fsw.vu.nl
94 Journal of Communication 60 (2010) 94–119 © 2010 International Communication Association
- Hartmann & P. Vorderer Moral Disengagement
Little past research has tried to examine both sides of the debate together, determining the circumstances under which
virtual violence produces enjoyment rather than moral distress and distaste. The present studies pursue this goal by
studying the psychological processes of moral disengagement in violent video games. We assume that violent games
are generally enjoyable when players consider shooting virtual characters to be justifiable.
The puzzle of enjoyable virtual violence
Drawing on Baron and Richardson’s (1994) definition of aggression, virtual violence can be defined as any user behavior
that follows the intention to do harm to other social characters in a video game, while the game characters are
motivated to avoid the harm-doing. One could argue that the concept of doing harm does not apply to video games at
all, because game characters are not living beings and thus do not fall into the ‘‘scope of justice’’ (Opotow, 1990, p. 3). In
fact, users of violent games argue that shooting opponents in a video game does not constitute the elimination of social
entities but rather the removal of objects or obstacles (Ladas, 2002). If so, the term ‘‘virtual violence’’ would be
inappropriate, because such acts lack another living being against whom the violence is committed.
The present approach, however, presumes that users perceive video game charac- ters not as objects, but as social
entities. Three arguments support this assumption. First, mediated cues easily trigger our automatic social perceptions,
creating the sense that another social entity is present. As Heberlein and Adolphs (2004) summarize:
‘‘Anthropomorphizing [. . .] occurs when we attribute social meanings to stimuli that are not social, such as computers or
clouds, presumably based on cues that signal the presence of agency or emotion. That we do so universally and
automatically is a hallmark of human cognition’’ (p. 7490).
Also, according to Mar and Macrae (2006), ‘‘[Humans] routinely view quite abstract nonliving representations as if they
were intentional agents’’ (p. 110, see also ‘‘Ethopoeia’’ in Nass & Moon, 2000). Related research from various scientific
domains indicates that people automatically identify social entities once they detect biological motion (Ahlstrom, Blake,
& Ahlstrom, 1997; Morewedge, Preston, & Wegner, 2007), readily perceive simple action-sequences with artificial objects
as social (Heider & Simmel, 1944; Oatley & Yuill, 1985), easily anthro- pomorphize nonhuman characters (Epley, Waytz, &
Cacioppo, 2007; Mar & Macrae, 2006), automatically behave toward computers and computer-animated agents as if
they were human (Bente, Kraemer, Petersen, & deRuiter, 2001; Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000; Yee, Bailenson, Urbanek, Chang,
& Merget, 2007) or social actors (Nass & Noon, 2000; Reeves & Nass, 1996), are inclined to feel empathy toward
animated characters (Morrison & Ziemke, 2005), and consequently tend to feel as though they are in a social situation if
a computer-animated character is displayed (Garau, Slater, Pertaub, & Razzaque, 2005; Hartmann, 2008). Thus, multiple
strands of research provide compelling evidence that users readily perceive mediated objects as social beings, primarily
due to automatic social perception processes. Recent research
Journal of Communication 60 (2010) 94–119 © 2010 International Communication Association 95
Moral Disengagement in Violent Video Games
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