Ethical Perceptions and Actions in Gaming

Christina Frederick, Jason P. Kring, Shawn Doherty, Dahai Liu, Christopher M. Via, Michelle Sinagra

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The present study explored how individuals perceive actions in gaming that contain ethical components, whether they have ever engaged in those behaviors and how judgments of ethical actions in gaming relate to participant personality. Participants completed a 16-item survey, which measured their perception of the ethics of gaming behaviors, such as buying a hack or lying to another player. Participants were also asked to indicate for each item whether or not they had ever engaged in that behavior. Results indicated that participants were able to judge the ethical level of different gaming behaviors with lying to other players and unauthorized access to servers being rated as most unethical. Furthermore, self-reports of engagement in unethical activities were fairly low. When ethical rating and action scores were correlated with personality characteristics using the Cattell 16PF1, the only correlation to reach significance showed that participants higher in rule consciousness rated the ethical gaming questions as more unethical overall than their less rule-conscious peers. Given the extent and popularity of gaming in today’s world, it is important to understand how individuals perceive the gaming culture. One aspect of this culture that merits further examination is ethical behavior in gaming.

Original languageAmerican English
JournalInternational Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science
Volume3
StatePublished - Mar 1 2015

Keywords

  • gaming behaviors
  • ethics
  • ethical actions
  • perception

Disciplines

  • Social and Behavioral Sciences

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