We login to applications almost every day. The password is stored in our fingers, as an automated process (if they have used it long enough). When users realize they have entered a wrong character (before hitting login-button) they erase the whole password, and retype the entire password – instead of just the last wrong character. Question is why?
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Answer
I would say that it is due to two reasons.
The first one you mention yourself, it's an automated process. It's easier to perform an automated process from the beginning to the end rather than breaking in somewhere in the middle and trying to complete it. In other words, it may take a user less time to write the entire password than the last third of it, because that's not a muscle pattern in the same way as the entire password is, the cognitive load for that task is increased immensely.
The other reason I would say is in the masking of the password. When the user realizes that she probably slipped on the keyboard and stops writing, she stops in the automated process. It's hard to backtrack in an automated process where it went wrong. Did she stop right after the typo, or did she write a character after the typo? Looking at the masked text will not say much.
Issues like these simply makes it easier to rewrite the entire password rather than trying to mend a broken one.
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