Summary: Researchers explored how group dynamics, including virtual avatars, impact individuals’ moral judgments. The study revealed that participants often altered their opinions to align with those of a group, whether the pressure came from real individuals or AI-controlled avatars in a virtual environment.
This adjustment occurred less frequently in scenarios involving harm to others, suggesting a complex interplay between social conformity and moral considerations. These findings highlight the growing influence of digital environments on our decision-making processes and underscore the need for further exploration into the social consequences of virtual group pressure.
Key Facts:
- Influence Across Real and Virtual Groups: Individuals are likely to modify their moral judgments to conform with both real and virtual groups, including AI-controlled avatars.
- Moral Considerations and Conformity: Conformity to group judgments decreases in situations where harm to others is involved, indicating a moral boundary to social influence.
- Digital Worlds and Decision Making: The study underscores the potent influence of digital environments on our judgments, necessitating further research into the implications of virtual group dynamics.
Source: SWPS University
How confident are you in your judgments and how well can you defend your opinions? Chances are that they will change under the influence of a group of avatars in a virtual environment. Scientists from SWPS University investigated the human tendency to be influenced by the opinions of others, including virtual characters.
“We usually conform to the views of others for two reasons. First, we succumb to group pressure and want to gain social acceptance. Second, we lack sufficient knowledge and perceive the group as a source of a better interpretation of the current situation,” describes Dr. Konrad Bocian from the Institute of Psychology at SWPS University.
So far, only a few studies have investigated whether moral judgments, or evaluations of another person’s behaviour in a given situation, are subject to group pressure. This issue was examined by scientists from SWPS University in collaboration with researchers from the University of Sussex and the University of Kent. The scientists also investigated how views about the behaviour of others changed under the influence of avatar pressure in a virtual environment.
A paper on this topic was published in PLOS ONE.
“Today, social influence is increasingly as potent in the digital world as in the real world. Therefore, it is necessary to determine how our judgments are shaped in the digital reality, where interactions take place online and some participants are avatars, not real humans,” points out Dr. Bocian.
Others know better?
In the first study, the researchers tested the extent to which participants – a total of 103 people – would change their private moral judgments to conform with the judgments of others.
First, participants independently judged specific behaviour, such as a woman punishing her child for getting bad grades in school or a man answering the phone and talking loudly in a cinema.
Then, participants judged the same behaviours in groups with three other people who responded in a completely different way than the participant did in the first part of the study.
“Participants adjusted their opinions to conform with others in 43% cases. However, they did it less often when the judgments concerned situations in which other people were harmed,” describes Dr. Konrad Bocian.
Under pressure of avatars
The second study repeated the experiment with 138 participants in a virtual environment. Each participant first judged the behaviour of other people in a given situation, and then – after putting on a VR headset – did it again in the presence of three avatars in a virtual environment.
Some of the avatars were allegedly controlled by humans, the remaining avatars were AI-controlled. In the latter case, participants were told the Kent School of Engineering and Digital Arts wanted to run tests on their new three algorithms, which were implemented in the virtual avatars.
“It turned out that participants changed their judgments to align them with judgments of human-controlled avatars in 30% cases, and in 26 percent cases when avatars were controlled by AI. The results suggest that judgments about moral behaviour, like other judgments we make, are subject to pressure from both real and virtual groups,” comments Dr. Bocian.
Researchers emphasise that further research is needed to determine the extent to which groups can influence the judgments of others in a digital setting, and in particular the social consequences of such influence in the era of rapid growth of digital communication, which may soon move to different metaverses.
“Group pressure to influence private moral judgments of individuals in a virtual world can be used for both good and malicious purposes. This is why understanding the mechanisms of this influence is so important.
“Only with in-depth knowledge can we increase the awareness of virtual world participants about the influence that others can have on them,” the researcher concludes.
About this psychology and morality research news
Author: Ewelina Krajczyńska-Wujec
Source: SWPS University
Contact: Ewelina Krajczyńska-Wujec – SWPS University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Moral conformity in a digital world: Human and nonhuman agents as a source of social pressure for judgments of moral character” by Konrad Bocian et al. PLOS ONE
Abstract
Moral conformity in a digital world: Human and nonhuman agents as a source of social pressure for judgments of moral character
Could judgments about others’ moral character be changed under group pressure produced by human and virtual agents?
In Study 1 (N = 103), participants first judged targets’ moral character privately and two weeks later in the presence of real humans. Analysis of how many times participants changed their private moral judgments under group pressure showed that moral conformity occurred, on average, 43% of the time.
In Study 2 (N = 138), we extended this using Virtual Reality, where group pressure was produced either by avatars allegedly controlled by humans or AI. While replicating the effect of moral conformity (at 28% of the time), we find that the moral conformity for the human and AI-controlled avatars did not differ.
Our results suggest that human and nonhuman groups shape moral character judgments in both the physical and virtual worlds, shedding new light on the potential social consequences of moral conformity in the modern digital world.
