Virtual Morality: Using Virtual Reality to Study Moral Behavior in Extreme Accident Situations

Willingness to take responsibility: Self-sacrifice versus sacrificing others in takeover decisions during autonomous driving

“…Contrary to previous results, when the AV's chosen path would result in saving the driver and sacrificing the pedestrians, our participants chose to drive manually significantly less often, with only 59.4% choosing to take over; moreover, even if participants’ intentions were in line with that of the AV, only 34.3% of drivers chose to take over when the car had decided to sacrifice the pedestrians and save the driver. These results show that many drivers want to leave the decision to the AV and avoid responsibility for accidents if self-safety is guaranteed, which is in line with a previous study in which participants were reluctant to make decisions with potentially deadly consequences for others, except when omissions would lead to self-sacrifice [ 44 ]. Furthermore, survey participants have also been found to give less responsibility to drivers relying on an AV than those choosing to drive manually in critical situations [ 40 ].…”

“…A potential explanation for this finding is the higher emotional arousal evoked by the self-sacrifice situation during the video survey, which could have affected men and women as well as younger and older participants in different ways. Previous studies have shown that visually presented or desktop virtual reality dilemmas induce higher emotional arousal than text surveys [ 45 , 46 ] and that requiring a participant to commit harmful actions against others enhances their emotional arousal in moral conflict situations compared with when they can rely on autonomous driving [ 44 , 47 ]. Accordingly, as female participants show higher emotional arousal when watching videos that induce specific emotions [ 48 ] and significantly higher self-focused emotional reactions in general [ 49 , 50 ], we assume that our female participants avoided manual driving in critical situations to evade the higher intensity and stress compared with relying on the AV [ 44 ].…”

“…Previous studies have shown that visually presented or desktop virtual reality dilemmas induce higher emotional arousal than text surveys [ 45 , 46 ] and that requiring a participant to commit harmful actions against others enhances their emotional arousal in moral conflict situations compared with when they can rely on autonomous driving [ 44 , 47 ]. Accordingly, as female participants show higher emotional arousal when watching videos that induce specific emotions [ 48 ] and significantly higher self-focused emotional reactions in general [ 49 , 50 ], we assume that our female participants avoided manual driving in critical situations to evade the higher intensity and stress compared with relying on the AV [ 44 ]. Similarly, the relatively low emotional regulation abilities of young adults [ 51 ] may influence their takeover decisions, although emotional arousal differences are inconsistent across age groups [ 52 ].…”

Contributions of the 5G Network with Respect to Poverty (SDG1), Systematic Literature Review

“…VR involves creating a computer-generated virtual environment in which users can interact using devices such as VR goggles or headsets, while AR overlays digital information on top of the real world using devices such as smartphones or tablets [60]. These technologies have great potential for a wide variety of applications, including training and learning [61][62][63][64], entertainment [65,66], advertising [67] and marketing [68], simulation of dangerous situations [69], and aid in the treatment of diseases [70][71][72][73]. Currently, VR and AR are experiencing rapid growth and expansion [74], driven by the development of ever more advanced technologies and the popularity of video games [65,66] and mobile applications [75,76].…”

Coordinated Control Design for Ethical Maneuvering of Autonomous Vehicles

“…In spite of unrealistic character of trolley-based ethical framework, it facilitates the understanding of the ethical problem of autonomous vehicle decisions [13,46]. A possible improvement of the classical framework is the testing of human trolley-based decisions in the context of virtual or augmented reality [47,48], which can improve real feeling character for examining human decision process.…”