Department of Psychology in Sopot, SWPS University, Warszawa, Poland.
School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2024 Feb 15;19(2):e0298293. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298293. eCollection 2024.
Could judgments about others' moral character be changed under group pressure produced by human and virtual agents? In Study 1 (N = 103), participants first judged targets' moral character privately and two weeks later in the presence of real humans. Analysis of how many times participants changed their private moral judgments under group pressure showed that moral conformity occurred, on average, 43% of the time. In Study 2 (N = 138), we extended this using Virtual Reality, where group pressure was produced either by avatars allegedly controlled by humans or AI. While replicating the effect of moral conformity (at 28% of the time), we find that the moral conformity for the human and AI-controlled avatars did not differ. Our results suggest that human and nonhuman groups shape moral character judgments in both the physical and virtual worlds, shedding new light on the potential social consequences of moral conformity in the modern digital world.
他人的道德品质判断是否会在人类和虚拟代理产生的群体压力下发生改变？在研究 1（N=103）中，参与者首先私下对目标的道德品质进行判断，两周后在真人面前进行判断。分析参与者在群体压力下改变私人道德判断的次数表明，平均有 43%的时间会出现道德从众现象。在研究 2（N=138）中，我们通过虚拟现实扩展了这一研究，在虚拟现实中，群体压力要么是由据称由人类或 AI 控制的化身产生的。虽然复制了道德从众的效果（占 28%的时间），但我们发现人类和 AI 控制的化身的道德从众没有差异。我们的研究结果表明，人类和非人类群体在物理和虚拟世界中塑造道德品质判断，为现代数字世界中道德从众的潜在社会后果提供了新的视角。
