Need help with research on moral psychology

[spacemonkey]

I am on my final year of university now, for which I have to complete my solo project. I am a games software student and so it relates to video games, however I am having a slight problem because we have to back our ideas up with academic research and most of what is available relating to games isn’t academic. I have been told to look towards psychology to provide me with the academic background that I need. Behaviourism is one area that is already used extensively in games design; however it isn’t quite deep enough for what I am doing. I could have made life easier I guess by choosing a topic that related more heavily towards this side of things, but I wanted to do something more original relating to my interests in the use of ethics in video games.

I want to test the importance of the avatars moral identity to the player in relation to other gameplay features. In other words, I want to test whether or not a player can be persuaded away from their chosen moral identity for the character with rewards and consequences that might affect gameplay, to see what the strongest influencer is. It is of general belief that in games people do not think ethically because it is just a game and the most important goal is reaping the benefits that will help them to get to the end. However, I have noticed in case studies, and when asking friends, that sometimes players will feel guilt, or a warm glow from the decisions that they make, which is suggestive of the fact that emotional motivators can still have a play in making decisions within games.
I did manage to find a book about this kind of thing, ‘ethics in game design: learning value through play,’ which explore games and their potential for engaging a players ethical thinking, however it still seems to be a fairly new idea to apply this kind of psychology to video games and as such research seems limited. 

I am looking for some research that I can use in comparison with the results of my test to see how closely moral reasoning matches that within a game environment. I do have an interest in psychology and I have a strong interest in furthering the study in relation to my own area of interest, however at current my knowledge is quite insufficient and I am having a few issues in deciding what direction I should be going in. I would therefore really appreciate any suggestions anyone can make in helping me to find a theory or an experiment I can pin this on. I thought of two angles to look at this from: The effects of rewards and consequences as motivators in moral behaviour; additional motivators as to why people perform certain deeds with little or no benefit to themselves. Thanks for reading