Forced-choice decision-making in modified trolley dilemma situations: a virtual reality and eye tracking study

Skulmowski, Alexander; Bunge, Andreas; Kaspar, Kai; Pipa, Gordon

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00426

Cited by 115 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 53 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Mikhail, 2007;Thomson, 1976Thomson, , 1985Unger, 1996). So far, research on modified trolley dilemmas has shown that people in general act utilitarian and are relatively comfortable with utilitarian ADVs, programmed to minimize harm (Bonnefon et al, 2016;Skulmowski, Bunge, Kaspar, & Pipa, 2014). In contrast, German law interdicts the evaluation of human life (Art.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This way of presenting the dilemma introduces issues like the disregard of important contextual and situational influences in moral decision-making (Skulmowski et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this context, trolley dilemmas have recently experienced a revival in science(e.g. Navarrete, McDonald, Mott, & Asher, 2012;Pan, Banakou, & Slater, 2011;Patil, Cogoni, Zangrando, Chittaro, & Silani, 2014;Skulmowski et al, 2014). The immersion thatVR environments provide serves to improve ecological validity while maintaining control over experimental variables (Madary & Metzinger, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Human Decisions in Moral Dilemmas are Largely Described by Utilitarianism: Virtual Car Driving Study Provides Guidelines for Autonomous Driving Vehicles

et al. 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ethical thought experiments such as the trolley dilemma have been investigated extensively in the past, showing that humans act in utilitarian ways, trying to cause as little overall damage as possible. These trolley dilemmas have gained renewed attention over the past few years, especially due to the necessity of implementing moral decisions in autonomous driving vehicles (ADVs). We conducted a set of experiments in which participants experienced modified trolley dilemmas as drivers in virtual reality environments. Participants had to make decisions between driving in one of two lanes where different obstacles came into view. Eventually, the participants had to decide which of the objects they would crash into. Obstacles included a variety of human-like avatars of different ages and group sizes. Furthermore, the influence of sidewalks as potential safe harbors and a condition implicating self-sacrifice were tested. Results showed that participants, in general, decided in a utilitarian manner, sparing the highest number of avatars possible with a limited influence by the other variables. Derived from these findings, which are in line with the utilitarian approach in moral decision making, it will be argued for an obligatory ethics setting implemented in ADVs.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This way of presenting the dilemma introduces issues like the disregard of important contextual and situational influences in moral decision-making (Skulmowski et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Human Decisions in Moral Dilemmas are Largely Described by Utilitarianism: Virtual Car Driving Study Provides Guidelines for Autonomous Driving Vehicles

et al. 2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This illustrates what VR is useful for in these types of context. Finally, Skulmowski et al (2014) used a screen-based system to situate participants in a trolley that they could control and avoid colliding with people standing on branching tracks. They investigated a number of hypotheses relating to specific types of potential victims (male, female), the number balanced against each other (e.g., 10 people rather than 5 against 1, or 1 against 1), ethnicity, altogether with 11 different hypotheses.…”

Section: Virtual Representations Of Moral Dilemmasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing Our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARYVirtual reality (VR) started about 50 years ago in a form we would recognize today [stereo head-mounted display (HMD), head tracking, computer graphics generated images] -although the hardware was completely different. In the 1980s and 1990s, VR emerged again based on a different generation of hardware (e.g., CRT displays rather than vector refresh, electromagnetic tracking instead of mechanical). This reached the attention of the public, and VR was hailed by many engineers, scientists, celebrities, and business people as the beginning of a new era, when VR would soon change the world for the better. Then, VR disappeared from public view and was rumored to be "dead. " In the intervening 25 years a huge amount of research has nevertheless been carried out across a vast range of applications -from medicine to business, from psychotherapy to industry, from sports to travel. Scientists, engineers, and people working in industry carried on with their research and applications using and exploring different forms of VR, not knowing that actually the topic had already passed away.The purpose of this article is to survey a range of VR applications where there is some evidence for, or at least debate about, its utility, mainly based on publications in peer-reviewed journals. Of course not every type of application has been covered, nor every scientific paper (about 186,000 papers in Google Scholar): in particular, in this review we have not covered applications in psychological or medical rehabilitation. The objective is that the reader becomes aware of what has been accomplished in VR, where the evidence is weaker or stronger, and what can be done. We start in Section 1 with an outline of what VR is and the major conceptual framework used to understand what happens when people experience it -the concept of "presence. " In Section 2, we review some areas where VR has been used in science -mostly psychology and neuroscience, the area of scientific visualization, and some remarks about its use in education and surgical training. In Section 3, we discuss how VR has been used in sports and exercise. In Section 4, we survey applications in social psychology and related areas -how VR has been used to throw light on some social phenomena, and how it can be used to tackle experimentally areas that cannot be studied experimentally in real life. We conclude with how it has been used in the preservation of and access to cultural heritage. In Section 5, we present the domain of moral behavior, including an example of how it might be used to train professionals such as medical doctors when confronting serious dilemmas with patients. In Section 6, we consider how VR has been and might be used in various aspects of travel, collaboration, and industry. In Section 7, we consider mainly the use of VR in news presentation and also discuss different types of VR. In the concluding Section 8, we briefly consider new ideas that have recently emerged -an impossible task since during the short time we have written this page even newer idea...

show abstract

“…Recently, advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies have allowed the investigation of simulated moral actions in behavioural paradigms (e.g., Francis et al, 2016Francis et al, , 2017Patil, Cogoni, Zangrando, Chittaro, & Silani, 2014). Although these novel approaches have revealed mixed findings (Navarrete, McDonald, Mott, & Asher, 2012;Skulmowski, Bunge, Kaspar, & Pipa, 2014), recent virtual paradigms have found an increased preference for utilitarian actions in VR, when compared to text-based judgements. This has been observed in impersonal (i.e., switch dilemma; Pan & Slater, 2011;Patil et al, 2014) and personal moral dilemmas (i.e., footbridge dilemma; Francis et al, 2016Francis et al, , 2017McDonald, Defever, & Navarrete, 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual morality in the helping professions: Simulated action and resilience

Francis

Gummerum

Ganis

et al. 2017

British J of Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent advances in virtual technologies have allowed the investigation of simulated moral actions in aversive moral dilemmas. Previous studies have employed diverse populations to explore these actions, with little research considering the significance of occupation on moral decision-making. For the first time, in this study we have investigated simulated moral actions in virtual reality made by professionally trained paramedics and fire service incident commanders who are frequently faced with and must respond to moral dilemmas. We found that specially trained individuals showed distinct empathic and related personality trait scores and that these declined with years of experience working in the profession. Supporting the theory that these professionals develop resilience in moral conflict, reduced emotional arousal was observed during virtual simulations of a distressing dilemma. Furthermore, trained professionals demonstrated less regret following the execution of a moral action in virtual reality when compared to untrained control populations. We showed that, contrary to previous research, trained individuals made the same moral judgements and moral actions as untrained individuals, though showing less arousal and regret. In the face of increasing concerns regarding empathy decline in health care professionals, we suggest that the nature of this decline is complex and likely reflects the development of a necessary emotional resilience to distressing events.

show abstract

Forced-choice decision-making in modified trolley dilemma situations: a virtual reality and eye tracking study

Cited by 115 publications

References 53 publications

Human Decisions in Moral Dilemmas are Largely Described by Utilitarianism: Virtual Car Driving Study Provides Guidelines for Autonomous Driving Vehicles

Human Decisions in Moral Dilemmas are Largely Described by Utilitarianism: Virtual Car Driving Study Provides Guidelines for Autonomous Driving Vehicles

Enhancing Our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality

Virtual morality in the helping professions: Simulated action and resilience

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About