School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom.
Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2010 Dec;13(6):711-4. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2009.0310. Epub 2010 May 11.
The purpose of this research was to illustrate the broad usefulness of simple video-game-based virtual environments (VEs) for psychological research on real-world behavior. To this end, this research explored several high-level social phenomena in a simple, inexpensive computer-game environment: the reduced likelihood of helping under time pressure and the bystander effect, which is reduced helping in the presence of bystanders. In the first experiment, participants had to find the exit in a virtual labyrinth under either high or low time pressure. They encountered rooms with and without virtual bystanders, and in each room, a virtual person requested assistance. Participants helped significantly less frequently under time pressure but the presence/absence of a small number of bystanders did not significantly moderate helping. The second experiment increased the number of virtual bystanders, and participants were instructed to imagine that these were real people. Participants helped significantly less in rooms with large numbers of bystanders compared to rooms with no bystanders, thus demonstrating a bystander effect. These results indicate that even sophisticated high-level social behaviors can be observed and experimentally manipulated in simple VEs, thus implying the broad usefulness of this paradigm in psychological research as a good compromise between experimental control and ecological validity.
这项研究的目的是说明简单基于视频游戏的虚拟环境（VE）在真实世界行为的心理研究中的广泛用途。为此，这项研究在一个简单、廉价的计算机游戏环境中探索了几个高级别的社会现象：在时间压力下帮助的可能性降低和旁观者效应，即在旁观者存在的情况下帮助减少。在第一个实验中，参与者必须在高或低时间压力下找到虚拟迷宫中的出口。他们遇到了有和没有虚拟旁观者的房间，在每个房间里，一个虚拟人请求帮助。参与者在时间压力下帮助的频率显著降低，但旁观者的存在/不存在并没有显著调节帮助。第二个实验增加了虚拟旁观者的数量，并指示参与者想象这些是真实的人。与没有旁观者的房间相比，参与者在有大量旁观者的房间里帮助的频率显著降低，从而证明了旁观者效应。这些结果表明，即使是复杂的高级别社会行为也可以在简单的 VE 中观察和实验操纵，因此意味着该范式在心理研究中的广泛用途，是实验控制和生态有效性之间的良好折衷。
