Do Environment-Modification Behaviors and Gamers' Immersiveness Shape Exceptionalism Beliefs?

TL;DR

This study explores how virtual environment-modification behaviors and immersiveness influence beliefs in human exceptionalism, revealing that controllability of actions and immersion levels significantly affect these perceptions in digital worlds.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of virtual ecological behaviors and immersiveness on exceptionalism beliefs using GITT and BMF frameworks with a large multinational dataset.

Findings

High-controllability behaviors increase exceptionalism.

Immersiveness can reverse the effects of certain behaviors on exceptionalism.

Different behaviors have distinct impacts depending on players' immersion levels.

Abstract

Human exceptionalism strongly shapes human-nature perceptions, thinking, values, and behaviors. Yet little is known about how virtual ecological environments influence this mindset. As digital worlds become increasingly immersive and ecologically sophisticated, they provide novel contexts for examining how human value systems are formed and transformed. This study investigates how virtual environment-modification behaviors and players' sense of immersiveness jointly shape exceptionalism, drawing on worldviews from quantum mechanics and mathematical logic. Using Granular Interaction Thinking Theory (GITT) and the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF analytics), we analyze five key activities--tree planting, flower planting, flower crossbreeding, terraforming, and creating conditions for bug respawn--based on a multinational dataset of 640 Animal Crossing: New Horizons players from 29 countries. Results reveal two behavioral clusters distinguished by controllability. High-controllability behaviors (i.e., flower planting and terraforming) predict higher exceptionalism, whereas the flower-planting effect reverses among highly immersed players. Low-controllability behaviors (i.e., flower crossbreeding and manipulating bug spawning) predict lower exceptionalism, but these associations weaken or reverse under high immersiveness, respectively. These findings offer insights into leveraging virtual worlds to cultivate Nature Quotient (NQ), mitigate exceptionalist tendencies, and foster eco-surplus cultural orientations.