Author: Gabriela Naumnik

 
TPVR aims to address one of the critical issues in business psychology, namely behavior forecasting errors, by simulating a classical ethical dilemma in Virtual Reality – the Trolley Problem. Behavior forecasting errors refer to well-documented human inability to correctly predict future behavior. As demonstrated by behavioral ethics and business psychology research, people tend to assume that they would behave in a certain way in a given situation, but then, when faced with such case, they act in the exact opposite way. It is essential to understand that TPVR is neither a game nor any other form of entertainment – it is an educational experience. The overall goal of the project is to prompt users to reflect critically on their decision-making processes and behavior forecasting errors. This project neither aims to scare users nor judge the ethicality or correctness of their choices.

The Trolley Problem (TP) is one of the most well-known classical dilemmas which is widely discussed at universities around the world. The theoretical problem requires deciding whether to do nothing and kill five strangers with a speeding trolley or to turn to a track to run over one person instead of five. The dilemma is always very vague as it does not specify who are the people on the trails. Nevertheless, it is subject to significant deliberations during multiple marketing, management, ethics, politics, and psychology courses.
Simulating TP in VR has the potential to make users reflect on their behavior forecasting errors and decision-making processes. TPVR serves three distinct groups of users: academics, VR enthusiasts, and recruiters. The experience consists of three phases: discussion about the potential solution to the trolley problem, simulation of the trolley problem, and reflection on the decision making processes. Discussion and reflection phases are subject to minor modifications depending on the target-group to provide a more meaningful experience. Meanwhile, the simulation phase remains the same regardless of the target group. During the simulation, the user makes decisions by stating them aloud. The oral navigation is an unexpected discovery resulting from lack of conclusive user testing suggestions as to the best navigation method. Such findings led to further research demonstrating that verbal navigation helped the users self-reflect more and raises the stakes, and thus is the most appropriate method of navigation for this project. In contrast to phase one, which asks a user for the answer to the abstract dilemma, phase two provides an immersive experience with a twist, including placing a child on one of the tracks which is not mentioned by the original trolley problem and thus, raises the stakes even more.
The academics group can use TPVR to verify their assumptions and engage in more thought-provoking discussions and, depending on the course during which such discussions take place, lead to the deepening of their knowledge in fields ranging from business to ethics. The VR enthusiasts segment include intellectually-curious individuals who want to gain more self-awareness, and TPVR could not only help them understand their thought processes better but also could inspire them to encourage others to self-reflect more. The recruiter group consists of those who are looking to evaluate prospective job candidates towards failure and not-compliance based on the way they behave during phase three. In contrast to the first two groups, the way the latter group would put TPVR to use could differ depending on individual requirements. Nevertheless, rapid emergence and adoption of similar VR projects in recruiting suggest that TPVR has the potential to provide companies with a useful tool for assessing candidates’ attitudes and reasoning.