Game Perspective-Taking Effects on Players' Behavioral Intention, Attitudes, Subjective Norms, and Self-Efficacy to Help Immigrants: The Case of "Papers, Please"

This study expands on game character perspective-taking effects on political opinions while controlling for players' social dominance orientation or inclination for inequality among social groups. Random assignment to play a game as an immigration inspector decreased intention, subjective norms...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCyberpsychology, behavior and social networking Vol. 21; no. 11; p. 687
Main Authors Peña, Jorge, Hernández Pérez, Juan Francisco, Khan, Subuhi, Cano Gómez, Ángel Pablo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.11.2018
Subjects
Attitude
Emigrants and Immigrants
Female
Helping Behavior
Humans
Intention
Male
Politics
Random Allocation
Role Playing
Self Efficacy
Video Games - psychology
theory of planned behavior
immigration
perspective taking
video games
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Summary:This study expands on game character perspective-taking effects on political opinions while controlling for players' social dominance orientation or inclination for inequality among social groups. Random assignment to play a game as an immigration inspector decreased intention, subjective norms, and self-efficacy to help immigrants relative to baseline scores. The scores of participants randomly assigned to play a game similar in style but instead featuring the role of a newspaper editor remained unchanged. Within-subjects effects implied that baseline reductions in intention, subjective norms, and self-efficacy to help immigrants were solely attributed to playing games as game immigration inspectors. The study provides initial evidence that taking on the perspective of game characters can influence players' opinions about political issues, such as immigration.
ISSN:2152-2723
DOI:10.1089/cyber.2018.0030