The effect of in-game moral choices and NPCs’ identities on players’ intergroup attitudes

Extant literature suggested that committing immoral actions in video games may elicit feelings of guilt and encourage prosocial outcomes. However, there is a dearth of research that examined how decision-making involving various moral foundations in video games can influence players' intergroup perceptions. Therefore, this study examined how players' in-game decisions with respect to the six moral foundations and interactions with different non-player characters' (NPCs') identities influenced their attitudes toward outgroup foreign immigrants. A 2 (video game scenarios: moral choices vs. non-moral choices) by 3 (NPCs' nationality: all citizens vs. citizens and foreigners vs. all foreigners) experiment was conducted (N = 300). There was no main interaction effect across conditions. Participants who interacted with only citizen NPCs reported significantly more positive post-game attitudes toward immigrants than those who interacted with both citizen and foreigner characters. Participants who violated the care/harm, ingroup/loyalty, and liberty/oppression foundations experienced higher levels of guilt, but this had no impact on their immigrant attitudes. However, those who violated the fairness/reciprocity and liberty/oppression foundations reported poorer intergroup attitudes. Implications of the findings are discussed.