Tracking Mouse Trajectories Related to Decisions About Sexual Interest

Abstract

The current research explored continuous behavioral processes by recording participants' hand movements towards a response option using Mousetracker software. Across three studies, we tested the idea that sexual interest-related decisions can be indexed using automatic movements. Using a UK sample of self-identified same and opposite-gender attracted men (N = 43), Study 1 showed that the process of approaching the response button is faster, more direct, and less curved when participants respond from their own (vs. a nonpreferred) perspective. Study 2 supported these findings using a German sample of selfidentified same-and opposite-gender attracted men (N = 66). Using a teleiophilic sample of 100 self-identified opposite-gender attracted men (n = 51) and women (n = 49), Study 3 examined age-specific sexual interests (i.e., responding to stimuli from a pedophilic and a teleiophilic perspective). As expected, in the teleiophilic block, participants' responses were faster, more direct, and less curved than in the pedophilic block. Collectively, the results suggest that mousetracking shows promise as a measure of sexual interest (across the dimension of both gender and age), providing grounds for future research.

To What Extent Do Erotic Images Elicit Visuospatial versus Cognitive Attentional Processes? Consistent Support for a (Non-Spatial) Sexual Content-Induced Delay

“…Most consistently across all studies, we find what we labelled a SCID effect, a cognitive distraction that is not attributable to visuospatial attentional binding and generalizes to men and women equally (for similar delayed responding to sexually relevant targets in a mouse-tracking paradigm see Bartels, Lister, Imhoff, & Banse, 2019). In fact, in contrast to gender differences in many other domains of sex research (e.g., Baumeister, 2000;Chivers et al, 2007 ;Imhoff, Bergmann, Banse, & Schmidt, 2013),we have no evidence that men and women react differently in this regard.…”

A Dress Is Not a Yes: Towards an Indirect Mouse-Tracking Measure of Men’s Overreliance on Global Cues in the Context of Sexual Flirting

“…MD and AUC, as numerical indicators of the spatial course of a trajectory, represent the procedure’s genuine measures. While some researchers highlight the novel utility of MT and emphasize its potential (e.g., Kieslich & Henninger, 2017 ; Wulff et al, 2019 ), other voices are critical and express concerns about a possible redundancy of MT’s genuine measures compared to more conventional ones, such as RT and ER (e.g., Bartels et al, 2019 ).…”

“…As for the results of the current study, MD and AUC were indeed found to be considerably less conclusive than RT and ER. However, not least due to the limited sample size, it currently remains unclear whether RT and ER really provide more reliable estimates or whether MD and AUC are mere epiphenomena of the measurement (Bartels et al, 2019 ), so that one could possibly forego the use of a computer mouse (as well as a comparatively intricate data analysis) in favor of a keyboard-based approach. Also, both spatial measures may still prove crucial for differentiating causal mechanisms underlying OGC and thus provide important diagnostic information, e.g., in the context of therapeutic interventions and risk assessments.…”