Decisional Conflict Predicts Myopia

Despite the integral role conflict plays in the subjective experience of self-control decisions, most work investigating conflict does not measure it directly. In the present paper, we use mouse-tracking (Freeman & Ambady, 2009, 2010; Wojnowicz, Ferguson, Dale, & Spivey, 2009) – an emerging technique in which researchers measure participants’ computer-mouse movements while making a decision – to demonstrate the utility of a real-time measure of decisional conflict for studying self-control. Specifically, we investigated the directness of participants’ mouse movements while they made intertemporal choices (e.g., $5 today vs. $10 tomorrow), with greater conflict inferred for decisions in which participants’ trajectories were less direct (i.e., greater veering towards the unchosen option). Past work suggests that these deflections are a sensitive measure of response conflict (for a recent review, see Freeman, in press). Across four studies, we first test how the relative subjective value of both options influences conflict as measured by mouse-tracking, predicting that the more similar the subjective values, the greater the conflict and therefore the less direct mouse trajectories will be. We then test whether (and how strongly) directness of these decisions predicts participants’ myopia, as quantified by their hyperbolic discount rate.