Sleight of Hand: Identifying Concealed Information by Monitoring Mouse-Cursor Movements

Organizational members who conceal information about adverse behaviors present a substantial risk to that organization. Yet the task of identifying who is concealing information is extremely difficult, expensive, error-prone, and time-consuming. We propose a unique methodology for identifying concea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the Association for Information Systems 2019, Vol.20 (1), p.1-32
Main Authors: Jenkins, Jeffrey L., Proudfoot, Jeffrey G., Valacich, Joseph S., Grimes, G. Mark, Nunamaker, Jay F. Jr
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access control
Automation
Cognition & reasoning
Deception
Decision making
Experiments
Hypotheses
Management information systems
Methodology
Mouse devices
Polygraphs
Questionnaires
Risk assessment
Screening
Sensors
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Summary:Organizational members who conceal information about adverse behaviors present a substantial risk to that organization. Yet the task of identifying who is concealing information is extremely difficult, expensive, error-prone, and time-consuming. We propose a unique methodology for identifying concealed information: measuring people's mouse-cursor movements in online screening questionnaires. We theoretically explain how mouse-cursor movements captured during a screening questionnaire differ between people concealing information and truth tellers. We empirically evaluate our hypotheses using an experiment during which people conceal information about a questionable act. While people completed the screening questionnaire, we simultaneously collected mouse-cursor movements and electrodermal activity-the primary sensor used for polygraph examinations-as an additional validation of our methodology. We found that mouse-cursor movements can significantly differentiate between people concealing information and people telling the truth. Mouse-cursor movements can also differentiate between people concealing information and truth tellers on a broader set of comparisons relative to electrodermal activity. Both mouse-cursor movements and electrodermal activity have the potential to identify concealed information, yet mouse-cursor movements yielded significantly fewer false positives. Our results demonstrate that analyzing mouse-cursor movements has promise for identifying concealed information. This methodology can be automated and deployed online for mass screening of individuals in a natural setting without the need for human facilitators. Our approach further demonstrates that mouse-cursor movements can provide insight into the cognitive state of computer users.
ISSN:1536-9323
1536-9323
DOI:10.17705/1jais.00527