Testing Moral Disengagement and Proteus Effect Predictions on Feelings of Guilt and Self-Empowerment Attributed to Bearing Guns

Abstract

This study (179 participants, mean age 19. 98, 85% female) examined how violence justification via avatar role manipulations affected first-person shooter game players' subsequent feelings of guilt and self-empowerment attributed to bearing guns in the real-world. In support of the moral disengagement in violent video games model, an independent samples t-test suggested that participants assigned to play as gang members shooting at police officers felt guiltier than those assigned to play as police officers shooting at gang members. In support of Proteus effect predictions linked with self-perception and priming mechanisms, a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance suggested that self-empowerment attributed to carrying guns for both avatar roles increased from baseline to after gameplay, but avatar roles did not influence the increase. The lack of influence could be because participants did not adopt avatar behaviors with undesirable connotations. The results highlight avatar-user bonds through which the associations raised by virtual personas affected players' emotions and self-perception when engaging in simulated violence.

Moral Disengagement in Adolescent Offenders: Its Relationship with Antisocial Behavior and Its Presence in Offenders of the Law and School Norms

“…In recent years, moral disengagement in the adolescent population has been studied, especially in terms of delinquent behavior [16,19,27,28] the violence of armed groups outside the law [13,25,[29][30][31], bullying [32][33][34], cyberbullying [35][36][37][38][39], video games [40][41][42][43], moral disengagement and its relation to empathy [44,45], psychopathy [18,46], moral disengagement and civic norms [47], and sex offenders [48][49][50], among others, evidencing through varied research the importance of understanding moral disengagement to explain the social behaviors that are involved in moral decision making in different contexts [31].…”