The effect of fantasy context on moral action and judgment

Abstract

Prior research has suggested that individuals import facts from the real world into fictional worlds and that the likelihood of importation depends on both the type of fact and the fictional context (Weisberg & Goodstein, 2009). Here, we extended this work to examine the importation of real-world morality across fictional contexts. Undergraduate participants (Study 1) and MTurk participants (Study 2) were randomly assigned to either a realistic or fantastical interactive narrative focused on competing for a job straight out of college. At seven junctions, participants were required to select how they would proceed with the story, with each crossroad having an option to behave in a Machiavellian manner, committing a moral violation for personal gain. In Study 3, an MTurk sample was asked to render a third-party judgment of the actions of a character who consistently chose the Machiavellian option. For Study 1, a gender by condition interaction was found, with men, but not women, electing more immoral actions in the fantasy condition than in the realistic one. For study 2, where the sample was older and more removed from the circumstances of the story, no such effect was found for first-party action. Nonetheless, in Study 3, participants judged immoral actions taken in the realistic condition as more immoral than those taken in the fantasy context. Across all iterations of the study, greater transportation predicted choosing fewer first-person immoral actions and judging third-person immoral actions more harshly.