Can anonymity network increase the utilitarian in personal moral decision?

The internet is playing an increasing role in shifting the source of moral standards from face-to-face communities to online virtual networks. The virtual internet erodes our ability to act in concert with locally defined moral standards. To investigate whether network anonymity could increase the utilitarian in personal moral dilemma choice, using personal moral dilemmas as probes, 30 participants made these choices under social and virtual Internet context. The result showed two striking findings. Firstly, people tend to make an “inappropriate” response in the social context but make an “appropriate” response in the anonymous Internet. Secondly, comparing with an “inappropriate” response, an “appropriate” response in a social context will arouse emotional conflict but not in the anonymous Internet. These results illustrated that anonymity network increased the utilitarian in personal moral decision. Therefore, how to make the decision behavior in the Internet with “hot” emotion needs to consider in the future research.