# 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

## TL;DR

This study introduces a mouse-tracking task to measure men's tendency to rely on global cues like clothing when judging sexual interest, especially when sexually aroused.

## Contribution

A novel mouse-tracking task is developed to indirectly assess men's overreliance on global cues in sexual flirting contexts.

## Key findings

- Sexual arousal increases the likelihood of overreliance on global cues in men.
- Error rate and reaction time are reliable indicators of overreliance on global cues.
- Sex drive and sexual objectification moderate the relationship between arousal and cue reliance.

## Abstract

Assessing another person’s intention to flirt and, relatedly, their sexual interest is based on the interpretation and weighting of global (e.g., clothing style) and specific (e.g., facial expression) cues. Since cue incongruency increases the risk of erroneous judgments and thus can entail undesirable outcomes for both parties involved, detection of an individual propensity for overly relying on global (sexual) rather than specific (affective) cues is of social and clinical-forensic importance. Using a purpose-designed and pre-validated stimulus set, we developed a mouse-tracking task as an indirect behavioral measure for males’ overreliance on global cues (OGC) in the context of sexual flirting. In a convenience sample of heterosexual cisgender men (N = 79), experimentally induced sexual arousal was shown to increase the probability of OGC as a function of task difficulty (i.e., congruent or incongruent combinations of global and specific cues displayed by a potential female flirting partner). While error rate and reaction time proved to be indicators of OGC, the spatial measures maximum deviation and area under the curve provided less consistent results. In addition, error rate suggested sex drive and sexual objectification to act as moderators of the relationship between sexual arousal and OGC. Exploratory analysis further revealed a theoretically meaningful pattern of correlations between mouse-tracking measures and self-report measures of problematic (e.g., disinhibited, exploitative) sexuality. Implications of the results are discussed and a framework for differentiating potential causes of OGC (i.e., misperception, lack of self-control, and egocentric hedonism) is proposed.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10508-023-02798-x.