Congratulations to Dr Ross Bartels who, with his colleagues, has published a 3-study paper in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour, entitled ‘Tracking Mouse Trajectories Related to Decisions About Sexual Interest’.
Bartels, R. M., Lister, V. P., Imhoff, R., & Banse, R. (2019). Tracking mouse trajectories related to decisions about sexual interest. Archives of Sexual Behavior. Advanced online version, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-1436-3
The paper examines whether mousetracking (a measure of real-time decision-making) can be applied to the assessment of sexual interest, both typical (i.e., towards men or women) and atypical (i.e., towards children vs. adults). Studies 1 and 2 show that men identifying as same-gender attracted or opposite-gender attracted produced the expected pattern of responses (e.g., less curved mouse trajectories and faster response latencies towards their preferred sexual category), while Study 3 showed this same pattern with regards to an interest in adults (versus children) in a teleiophilic sample from the general population. These findings provide advantages over other forms of assessment, as mousetracking highlights the real-time decisions being made towards stimuli. The importance of considering perspective-taking when assessing sexual interest are also discussed. The findings also have implications for the assessment of atypical (or offence-related) interests in forensic populations; a goal for future research.
University of Lincoln, College of Social Science Research
Dr Ross Bartels, University of Lincoln, School of Psychology
Victoria Lister, University of Lincoln, School of Psychology
Roland Imhoff, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Department of Social and Legal Psychology
Rainer Banse, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Department of Social and Legal Psychology and University of Bonn, Department of Psychology