Presence of Guilt

In this dissertation, it is proposed that presence is a mechanism overlooked by previous work on video games and guilt. Presence is a multidimensional construct which broadly reflects the feeling of “being there” in a mediated space. One dimension of particular concern for the current study is social presence, which leads individuals to experience mediated characters as though they are real social actors and not simulated (Lee 2004). Guilt has been defined as “the dysphoric feeling associated with the recognition that one has violated a personally relevant moral or social standard” (Kugler & Jones, 1992). Numerous studies concerning guilt have found that video games are capable of eliciting guilt from players (Hartmann & Vorderer 2010; Hartmann et al., 2010; Grizzard et al., 2014; Grizzard et al., 2017). Virtual reality (VR) technology allows users to feel presence in higher levels than other mediums (Fox, Arena, & Bailenson 2009; Kalyanaraman & Bailenson, 2020; Possler, Klimmt, Raney, Steger, Landmann, & Seibert, 2019; Seibert & Shafer 2018). Control naturalness (Skalski, Tamborini, Shelton, Buncher &Lindmark 2011) has also been found to be closely tied to a user’s experience of presence while playing video games (Seibert & Shafer, 2018). As such, an experiment (N = 140) was conducted to explore differences in guilt found between participants committing violent acts in three video game conditions, which varied by display and control type and were intended to elicit varying levels of presence. The results indicated that there was no difference found in guilt across the three conditions. Results also indicated the primary differences in presence dimensions and control naturalness found among the three conditions were between the standard television display and the two VR conditions. Potential explanations for the findings and possible avenues for future research are offered.