The Influence of Adolescents' Moral Salience on Actions and Entertainment Experience in Interactive Media

The current study examines the role of US and German adolescents' innate morality in influencing decisions in and subsequent enjoyment of an interactive media environment. Moving beyond models of moral reasoning, morality was assessed using Moral Foundations Theory allowing for an intuitionist...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of children and media 2013-11, Vol.7 (4), p.480-506
Main Authors: Joeckel, Sven, Bowman, Nicholas D., Dogruel, Leyla
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
adolescents
decision making
entertainment
morality
video games
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Summary:The current study examines the role of US and German adolescents' innate morality in influencing decisions in and subsequent enjoyment of an interactive media environment. Moving beyond models of moral reasoning, morality was assessed using Moral Foundations Theory allowing for an intuitionist perspective on morality. In an experimental design, adolescents aged 12 to 14 years from the United States (N = 91) and Germany (N = 94), played a modified computer game simulation where they were confronted with the decision to violate or uphold various aspects of morality. Data suggest that in the group of German adolescents moral salience leads to a decrease in decisions to commit moral violations, while in the group of US adolescents decisions to commit moral violations appeared to be random. Enjoyment was not influenced by moral module salience in either group.
ISSN:1748-2798
1748-2801
DOI:10.1080/17482798.2013.781513