Walking the moral plank: Using virtual reality to investigate moral decision-making under threat

Lindsay(former Grady Postdoctoral Research Associate), Glenna Read, & Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn (in press). “Walking the moral plank: Using virtual reality to investigate moral decision-making under threat.” Journal of Communication. Abstract: How is decision-making affected when individuals face threats to safety? Guided by the theory of dyadic morality, the limited capacity model of motivated-mediated message processing, and exemplification theory, we investigated individuals’ physiological responses and behavioral moral decision-making under safety risk. Using an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment simulating a moral tradeoff, participants crossed a deep pit and made decisions between their safety and that of another person, reflecting a tradeoff between egoism and altruism. Results from an experiment with 201 participants revealed that exposure to threat increased arousal (physiologically and self-reported), which decreased the extent to which they felt their decision harmed others, leading to selfish decisions in the moral dilemma. However, this pattern only manifested when concerns of harm were not made salient before the threatening experience. Findings demonstrate VR’s utility for simulating moral tradeoffs and assessing the psychophysiological and behavioral outcomes of media psychology and morality theories.