Reflecting Yourself? The Influence of Mirrors and Avatars on Dishonest Behavior in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Objective self-awareness theory (Duval & Wicklund, 1972) predicts that individuals behave morally compliant and honest under increased self-awareness. We argue that this proposition requires a critical reflection in the context of Virtual Reality (VR). The present thesis investigates self-awareness and dishonesty in VR and is among the first to provide such an exploratory reflection. In an experiment, we tested the effects of the two factors (1) mirror presence and (2) avatar choice on dishonesty in a highly-immersive VR setting. Participants played a mind game in VR that incentivized dishonest reporting without any fear of detection. We let participants choose between two human and one fictitious avatar. We also varied the presence of a mirror across participants. Our results show that participants took significantly more time to lie when facing a mirror or wearing a human avatar, indicating a higher state of self-awareness. However, this effect did not significantly influence the resulting level of dishonesty. We discuss a number of factors that could explain this finding and highlight the relevance of further research in the economics domain.

Keywords: Self-awareness, moral behavior, dishonesty, decision making, self-image, virtual reality

JEL Classification: A13, A14, M1, M10, M14, M15, M19, M5, M50, M53, M54, O32, O33, Y4, Y40