# The innovation bias: Implicit preferences for innovative and historical solutions over contemporary ones

## TL;DR

People have an implicit bias toward innovative or historical solutions rather than current ones, as shown through hand movement tracking in experiments.

## Contribution

The study introduces mouse tracking to reveal implicit preferences for innovative or historical options over contemporary ones.

## Key findings

- Participants showed implicit favor for innovative or historical options over current ones in their hand movements.
- The preference pattern was consistent across four preregistered experiments.
- Moderate deviation from the current standard, whether through innovation or nostalgia, attracts implicit interest.

## Abstract

Innovative products and services promise to improve our lives in many ways. Novel, unfamiliar approaches, however, also come with increased uncertainty regarding their feasibility and quality. In four preregistered experiments, we investigated implicit biases toward such innovative approaches. We tracked hand movements while participants chose between options of different levels of innovativeness. Choices either compared historic versus contemporary options (past comparison; e.g., carriage vs. car) or they compared contemporary versus innovative options (future comparison; e.g., car vs. self-driving car). While for past comparisons, movement trajectories were systematically torn toward the more historic option, the opposite effect was observed for future comparisons. This pattern of results replicated across all four studies. People, thus, seem to implicitly favor innovative and historic approaches over established ones. We conclude that moderate incongruity from an established approach, either through innovation or through a return to the past, evokes particular interest and attraction toward non-standard alternatives.

•We use mouse tracking to capture implicit attitudes toward innovation•People implicitly favor innovative and historic solutions over contemporary ones•Deviations from the current standard thus exert an implicit attraction

We use mouse tracking to capture implicit attitudes toward innovation

People implicitly favor innovative and historic solutions over contemporary ones

Deviations from the current standard thus exert an implicit attraction

Social sciences