Think Twice: The Influence of Immersion on Decision Making during Gambling in Virtual Reality

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly being explored as an alternative medium for gambling games to attract players. Typically, gambling games try to impair a player's decision making, usually for the disadvantage of the players' financial outcome. An impaired decision making results in the inability to differentiate between advantageous and disadvantageous options. We investigated if and how immersion impacts decision making using a VR-based realization of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to pinpoint potential risks and effects of gambling in VR. During the IGT, subjects are challenged to draw cards from four different decks of which two are advantageous. The selections made serve as a measure of a participant's decision making during the task. In a novel user study, we compared the effects of immersion on decision making between a low-immersive desktop-3D-based IGT realization and a high immersive VR version. Our results revealed significantly more disadvantageous decisions when playing the immersive VR version. This indicates an impairing effect of immersion on simulated real life decision making and provides empirical evidence for a high risk potential of gambling games targeting immersive VR.