When the mouse betrays your mood

Operate & monitor

Lukas Dehling, 15.02.2016, 09:31

When the mouse betrays your mood

An international team of researchers has succeeded in recognizing the emotional state of the user based on their movements with the computer mouse. Speed is a decisive criterion here.

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"We were able to identify with 82% certainty whether the test subjects had negative emotions based on the mouse movements," explains Prof. Markus Weinmann from the University of Liechtenstein.

Did you know that your mouse usage behavior can provide information about your mood? Researchers have discovered this through repeated experiments with different comparison groups. For example, they frustrated some of the test subjects in advance with unsolvable tasks in order to then carry out the actual test in which the mouse movements were measured. The researchers then compared these with the movements of the group of participants who were able to complete the test without prior frustration. "A relaxed computer user moves the mouse quickly in straight lines or slightly curved lines. The more frustrated or negative they are, the slower, but also more angular and longer the mouse movements are," explains Prof. Markus Weinmann from the University of Liechtenstein.

This knowledge should primarily serve the operators of online shopping platforms: By installing a plug-in on their website, website operators can quickly identify visitors with a negative attitude based on their mouse movements and take countermeasures - be it by forwarding them to customer service or sending an automatically generated apology. Another scenario: companies that use this knowledge to monitor the motivation of their employees in the future.

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