Using process tracing to predict charitable donations

Prospective donors to charitable organizations must balance prosocial motives against self-interested financial considerations. Two laboratory experiments tracked mouse cursor trajectories during online donation decisions to dynamically examine how these conflicting motives shape choices. Cursor movements revealed the timing at which prosocial versus self-interested attributes influenced decision making; earlier consideration of prosocial attributes was associated with higher donation rates, suggesting prosociality can operate rapidly. Cursor-derived measures of decision conflict also significantly predicted donation outcomes in ways that distinguished distinct donor types: Some participants exhibited consistently higher (lower) conflict in cursor trajectories when opting not to donate, even after controlling for stated willingness to donate, and this predicted greater (less) generosity in unrelated donation contexts. Additionally, cursor movement data better predicted out-of-sample donation decisions compared to response times or traditional behavioral measures and retained predictive strength even after controlling for these variables. These results underscore the value of cursor-tracking methodologies in providing richer theoretical insights and predictive accuracy regarding donor behavior. Specifically, dynamic cursor metrics offer charitable giving researchers a nuanced approach to understanding how donors process and resolve trade-offs between self-interested and prosocial motivations during donation solicitations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).