Sven Joeckel

Gut or Game? The Influence of Moral Intuitions on Decisions in Video Games

Recent theorizing on the role of morality in media entertainment suggests morality serves as a guiding force in audience reactions to content. Using moral foundations theory as a base, research has found significant associations between moral salience and audience preferences for and responses to film and television varying in their presentations of morality. Our study extends this work by testing the same relationship in video games. Because a distinguishing factor between video games and traditional media is interactivity, our study focuses on how moral salience predicts decisions made in a video game. We find that increased moral salience led to a decreased probability of moral violations, while decreased moral salience led to an observed random (50%) distribution of violations. This finding was largely stable across different morality subcultures (German, United States) and age groups (adolescents and elderly), with deviations from this pattern explained by theory. We interpret this as evidence for a gut or game explanation of decision making in video games. When users encounter virtual scenarios that prime their moral sensitivities, they rely on their moral intuitions; otherwise, they make satisficing decisions not as an indication of moral corruption but merely as a continuation of the virtual experience.

Choosing the right app: An exploratory perspective on heuristic decision processes for smartphone app selection

Decision-making theories have argued that many daily decisions are the result of heuristic rather than systematic processes. Given the ubiquity of smartphones as mobile communication and computing devices along with the vast smartphone app market, our exploratory study aimed to understand how heuristics guide smartphone app selection. Observing 49 smartphone users from the US and Germany viewing 189 total apps from three predetermined categories, the current study identified five decision-making heuristics used to download a variety of smartphone apps. Of these, four were variants of a “Take the First” (TtF) heuristic that allowed smartphone users to quickly navigate the app market, by passing a good deal of other informational cues in order to download apps that were simply highly rated or ranked. Reliance on heuristic processing is useful in helping navigate the app market, but it also results in smartphone users overlooking potentially important app information.

The use and acceptance of new media entertainment technology by elderly users: development of an expanded technology acceptance model

Research on elderly peoples ICT acceptance and use often relies on the technology acceptance model (TAM) framework, but has been mostly limited to task-oriented uses. This article expands approaches in technology acceptance and use by developing a model to explain entertainment-related uses of new media technology by elderly people. On a theoretical level, we expand the TAM perspective by adding concepts that act as barriers and/or facilitators of technology acceptance, namely technophobia, self-efficacy and previous experience and expertise with technology. We develop an expanded TAM by testing the role of these concepts in two studies on entertainment media technology. In Study 1, we investigate behavioural intention to use 3D cinema among N = 125 German elderly media users (Age 50+). In Study 2, we focus the actual use of a computer game simulation by N = 115 German and US elderly media users (Age 50+). Findings in both studies point towards the central role of perceived usefulness, here modelled as enjoyment, as the reason for elderly peoples use and acceptance of entertainment media technology. Perceived ease of use is seen as a precondition for enjoyment, particularly for interactive media.

Elderly people and morality in virtual worlds: A cross-cultural analysis of elderly people’s morality in interactive media

This study examines elderly people’s innate moral foundations in influencing decisions, and their subsequent enjoyment in an interactive media environment. The Moral Foundation Questionnaire was used to distinguish between the moral intuitions of elderly US and German respondents, who were believed to have divergent yet stable moral codes that would be salient in a novel virtual world. In an experimental design, participants (N=116) were confronted with a computer simulation in which they could decide to violate or uphold each of five moral intuitions. Germans and Americans differed in their moral foundations, yet for both groups higher moral salience led to a decrease in decisions to commit moral violations in a virtual world. Results for enjoyment were mixed.

The reliance on recognition and majority vote heuristics over privacy concerns when selecting smartphone apps among German and US consumers

ABSTRACT The smartphone app market is a prime example of a digital market where consumers are tasked with selecting one option among a plethora of alternatives, at times indistinguishable from one another. Building upon findings on information processing and decision-making, we postulate that consumers follow simple (rather than complex) heuristic rules to navigate the app market. In particular, we focus on two such strategies: the recognition heuristic and the majority vote heuristic. App privacy information was also considered as a potentially salient cue in the decision-making process, given the personal data stored on smartphones. Results of a mixed-method design (behavioral analysis and think-aloud protocols) study with German (N = 18) and US (N = 25) students find a dominance of the recognition heuristic. Decisions are further supported by majority vote heuristics. Privacy information is largely disregarded, particularly by US participants. Implications for app market design and engagement are discussed.

Video game rating systems in the US and Europe

Regulating children’s and adolescents’ access to video games appeared on the agenda of media lawmakers from the 1990s on. Approaches in western democracies have largely followed the approach of industry self-regulation, resulting in a diverse set of different types of self-regulation systems. This study applies a comparative perspective on the actual rating practices, asking how far regulation systems differ systematically and how far these differences might lead to different rating decisions. The study analyzes both the set-up of three major western regulation systems (the German USK, the pan-European PEGI and the US ESRB) and the actual rating decisions in each of the three systems relying on secondary data at the aggregate level, individual rating decisions for 182 top-selling titles and a list of favorite video games of 744 adolescents in the US and Germany. Findings illustrate that each system has a distinct focus, according to which it regulates different video game use more strongly than the other systems.

Increasing the effectiveness of digital educational games

This study examines the effects of integrating instructional support in the form of a prompt that highlights the importance of learning from the educational game. We set out to answer the question of whether or not it is necessary to indicate an educational game as a learning material (in contrast to pure entertainment) to facilitate learning relevant for school. Research on entertainment media suggests that the implementation of such a learning instruction increases learners investment of mental effort and, thus, the learning outcome. Then again, learning instruction as an extrinsic incentive might negatively influence intrinsic motivation and extraneous cognitive load. Therefore, this study examines the effects of learning instruction on students intrinsic motivation, cognitive load, and learning with a digital educational game. We carried out a one-factor (learning instruction: yes/no) experimental design with N=150 participants (age 13 to 17). Results indicate that the learning instruction increased task-irrelevant processing and decreased the learning outcome. Thus, adding an explicit learning instruction is not recommended. On the contrary, our results suggest that playing just for fun enhances the effectiveness of such a learning environment. Playing increased students knowledge on the historical theme.Learning instructions are not recommended for learning with educational games.An extrinsic learning instruction increased extraneous cognitive load.The learning outcome was higher if students played just for fun.

Processing privacy information and decision-making for smartphone apps among young German smartphone users

ABSTRACT While privacy behaviour is generally equated with self-disclosure, other forms of behaviour that potentially infringe an individual’s privacy, such as downloading an app, are being neglected by research. We seek to fill this gap by modelling app decision-making within a dual-process model of the attitude–behaviour relationship and the role of privacy attitudes in two kinds of information processing: (1) spontaneous, heuristic processes that rely on automated attitude activation and (2) elaborate, cognitive processes that rely on behavioural intentions to guide behaviour. We used a quasi-experimental design to investigate app decision-making processes for N = 89 participants in N = 254 decision-making cases. Participants were asked to provide information on their actions after downloading three apps on their smartphones over a 2-week period. We could identify two distinct types of information processing and found support for attitude activation and, to a lesser degree, intentions as requirements for the influence of privacy attitudes on app decision-making.