Inside Out: Displaying mouse cursor trajectories enables the observation of one's own unfolding decision process

Individuals’ preferences and decisions are often guided by contextual cues. One such contextual cue is one’s own behavior. Here we investigate the impact of observing one’s own decision behavior on the decision-making process as it unfolds. We introduce a novel feature of mouse-tracking, whereby participants visualize their decision trajectory as a visible line on the computer screen while engaging in decision-making tasks. We found that participants who observed their decision trajectory in making preference-based choices exhibited a reduced conflict between the options as was indicated by a smaller maximal deviation (MD) for both familiar (Study 1) and novel (Study 2) stimuli. We discuss future directions and applications for understanding various psychological phenomena and processes.