Ethox and WEH Seminar - Bringing Bioethics into Play: Digital Games as an Empirical Tool to Investigate Moral Choices

Abstract

Digital games are already part of everyday life for about 2 billion people worldwide, and their popularity has been increasing steadily in recent years. Games are emotionally engaging, interactive, and allow for a myriad of scenarios and ramifications. Despite these advantages, bioethics has yet to embrace this exceptional resource. This talk presents a theoretical rationale to motivate empirical bioethicists to use games as an empirical tool. I will discuss how games fit into the current methodological landscape in the field, and what advantages they offer in comparison to traditional methods, including their potential for high scalability and greater emotional and contextual grounding. I will close with an example of a digital role-playing scenario, developed in collaboration with the Neuroscience, Ethics and Society Young People’s Advisory Group, to investigate young people’s values and preferences in relation to predictive testing in mental health.