(Not) alone in the world: Cheating in the presence of a virtual observer
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(Not) alone in the world: Cheating in the presence of a virtual observer Jantsje M. Mol1,2 · Eline C. M. van der Heijden1 · Jan J. M. Potters1 Received: 16 October 2018 / Revised: 14 January 2020 / Accepted: 18 January 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract We conducted an experiment in a high-immersive virtual reality environment to study the effect of the presence of a virtual observer on cheating behavior. Participants were placed in a virtual room and played 30 rounds of a cheating game without a chance of their cheating being detected. We varied whether or not a virtual observer (an avatar) was present in the room, and, if so, whether the avatar was actively staring at the decision maker or passively seated in a corner watching his smartphone. Results display significantly less cheating with an active than with a passive avatar, but not less cheating than in a control condition without an avatar. This suggests that an active (virtual) observer can intensify reputational concerns, but that the presence of someone passive and uninterested may actually alleviate such concerns. Keywords Virtual reality experiment · Cheating · Watching eyes effect JEL Classification B41 · C91 · C93
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1068 3-020-09644-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Jan J. M. Potters Jantsje M. Mol [email protected] 1
Tilburg School of Economics and Management, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
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Present Address: Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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1 Introduction Studying cheating behavior is an advancing branch of experimental research in both economics and psychology.1 It is motivated by the importance of cheating in many domains of life, and the advantages which experiments offer in terms of observation and control. Studies have shown that cheating behavior depends in important ways on context variables such as the payoff consequences to both self and others (Gneezy 2005), attention to moral standards (Mazar et al. 2008), procedural details (Jiang 2013), social information about others (Gino et al. 2009; Fosgaard et al. 2013), time pressure (Shalvi et al. 2012), and cognitive load (Mead et al. 2009). In the present paper, we examine one other context variable, namely the relevance of ‘being watched’. We study cheating behavior in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment.2 Subjects play a version of the mind game, which is a variation of the die-under-cup paradigm, in which they have an incentive to be dishonest without any chance of getting caught (Jiang 2013). To investigate whether social control (‘being watched’) influences the prevalence of cheating, we vary the presence or absence of a virtual observer, that is, an avatar looking like a human. Moreover, we investigate whether the behavior of the virtual observer matters. In one treatmen
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