Brain Activity Reveals What Makes Persuasive Messages Stick
A new study by the Communication Neuroscience Lab and colleagues reveals that activity in brain regions associated with reward and social processing can predict the effectiveness of messages
Neuroscientists have shown that looking at how people’s brains respond to persuasive messages in TV advertisements or newspaper articles can help reveal how these messages change minds or behavior. A new study aimed to determine if the same brain processes can be linked to message effectiveness across diverse formats, such as YouTube videos, health campaigns, and newspaper articles.
In a new study published in PNAS Nexus, researchers pooled data from over 500 individual participants across 16 functional MRI studies that investigated brain responses to and the effectiveness of persuasive messages across various contexts, including public health campaigns, crowdfunding sites, movie trailers, and YouTube videos. They found that, on average across these diverse contexts, activity in brain regions linked to reward and social processing can predict how effective messages will be.
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“Existing theories had suggested that decision-making is driven by brain activity in predictable brain systems,” Falk, Professor of Communication, Psychology, Marketing, Operations, Informatics, and Decisions, says. “One associated with personal rewards, and the other related to understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings — a process known as mentalizing.”
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https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/brain-activity-reveals-what-makes-persuasive-messages-stick