(Press-News.org) Several specific regions of our brains are activated in a two-part process when we are exposed to deceptive advertising, according to new research conducted by a North Carolina State University professor. The work opens the door to further research that could help us understand how brain injury and aging may affect our susceptibility to fraud or misleading marketing.
The study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to capture images of the brain while study participants were shown a series of print advertisements. The fMRI images allowed researchers to determine how consumers' brains respond to potentially deceptive advertising. "We did not instruct participants to evaluate the ads. We wanted to mimic the passive exposure to advertising that we all experience every day," says Dr. Stacy Wood, Langdon Distinguished Professor of Marketing at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research.
Participants were exposed to three pre-tested advertisements that were deemed "highly believable," "moderately deceptive" or "highly deceptive." The ads were also pre-tested to ensure that they were for products that consumers found equally interesting and desirable – leaving the degree of deception as the only significant variable.
"We found that people have a two-stage process they go through when confronted with moderately or highly deceptive ads," Wood says.
During the first stage, researchers saw increased activity in the precuneus – a part of the brain associated with focusing conscious attention. "We found that the more deceptive an advertisement is, the more you are drawn to it," Wood says, "much as our attention is drawn to potential threats in our environment." Specifically, in this study, the more deceptive an ad was, the more precuneus activity was observed.
During the second stage, researchers saw more activity in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and tempero-parietal junction (TPJ) regions of the brain. This suggests increased "theory-of-mind" (ToM) reasoning. ToM is a type of processing that allows us to distinguish our wants and needs from those of others, particularly as this applies to intuiting the intentions of other people. In this case, it appears to indicate that participants were trying to determine the truth behind the claims in the potentially deceptive advertisements.
"What's interesting here is that the moderately deceptive ads cause more activity during this second stage," Wood says. That may be because highly deceptive ads are screened out more quickly and discarded as not meriting further attention.
Overall, when looking at both stages of brain response, researchers found there was greater brain activation when participants were exposed to moderately deceptive ads. But, if moderately deceptive ads stimulate more brain activity, does that make us more susceptible to the sales pitch in ads that trigger just a pinch of skepticism?
Apparently not. In a follow-up, behavioral component of the study, researchers interfered with the ToM stage, making it more difficult for participants to determine the intention behind the ads. As a result, participants more frequently believed moderately deceptive advertising. This suggests that the second stage is an important step that helps protect consumers by allowing them to better discriminate and screen out deceptive ads.
"Now that we've identified these stages of brain response, it may help future researchers identify underlying neural reasons why some populations are more prone to fall prey to deceptive ads," Wood says. "For example, if these regions of the brain are likely to be affected by aging, it may explain why older adults are more vulnerable to fraud or deceptive advertising. Or how might concussive brain injuries, such as those seen in some sports, affect our long-term discrimination in making good consumer choices?"
INFORMATION:
The paper, "Suspicious Minds: An fMRI Investigation of How Consumers Perceive Deception in the Marketplace," was co-authored by Wood, Dr. Adam Craig of USF (lead researcher), Dr. Yuliya Loureiro of Fordham and Dr. Jennifer Vendemia of USC. The paper is published online in the Journal of Marketing Research.
END
We make our eye movements earlier or later in order to coordinate with movements of our arms, New York University neuroscientists have found. Their study, which appears in the journal Neuron, points to a mechanism in the brain that allows for this coordination and may have implications for rehabilitation and prosthetics.
Researchers have sought to understand the neurological processes behind eye and arm movements. For example, when you reach for an object, what goes on in our brains so that our eyes and arms are in sync? Such coordination is central to the way different ...
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Nearly one in three women who have breast cancer surgery will need to return to the operating room for additional surgery after the tumor is evaluated by a pathologist.
A new service at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center cuts that number drastically by having pathologists on-site in the operating suite to assess tumors and lymph nodes immediately after they are removed. Meanwhile, the surgeon and patient remain in the operating room until the results are back, and any additional operating can be done immediately.
This cut the number ...
According to a 2003 study by German and American scientists, a component of the Lily of the Valley scent known as Bourgeonal alters the calcium balance of human sperm and attracts the sperm. The "Lily of the Valley phenomenon" – also the title of a book about smelling – was born as a result of this discovery that sperm act as swimming olfactory cells which follow a "scent trail" laid by the egg. However, a detailed explanation for the Lily of the Valley phenomenon remained illusive as neither Bourgeonal nor other scents could be identified in the female sex organ. Scientists ...
Fanz Media Group Inc. announced today the launch of fanz.com a social network specifically focused on sports enthusiasts. Web and social media experts, and the gurus of sports media have come together to create the ultimate network of sports fans. Fanz.com is an open forum specifically for any and every sport. Any sport you can think of, fanz.com instantly connects you with the multimedia and social streams and allows instant interaction with other sports fans from around the globe.
Fanz.com is a sports network that provides one click content feeds and real time interaction ...
Parents may be misinformed during prenatal scans on whether their twins are identical or non-identical, say UCL researchers in a new commentary piece published today (29 February) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Determining if same-sex twins are identical or non-identical (from one egg or two; monozygotic or dizygotic) is not always straight forward, say the researchers. They looked at data from the Gemini study, a birth cohort of 2402 families with twins born in England and Wales in 2007.
Parents of same sex twins (1586) were asked ...
The bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes atypical pneumonia, is helping scientists uncover how cells make the most of limited resources. By measuring all the proteins this bacterium produces, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and collaborators, have found that the secret is fine-tuning.
Like a mechanic can fine-tune a car after it has left the factory, cells have ways to tweak proteins, changing their chemical properties after production – so-called post-translational modifications. Anne-Claude Gavin, Peer ...
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Often faced with overwhelming anxiety, patients newly diagnosed with lung cancer can find themselves in distress, and new research recommends nurses play a key role in alleviating concerns, leading to a better quality of life for patients.
A diagnosis of lung cancer – the leading cause of cancer death in the United States – brings with it high levels of stress and raises existential issues and death-related thoughts and concerns in patients, said Rebecca H. Lehto, assistant professor in the College of Nursing at Michigan State University.
In a ...
DURHAM, N.C. -- Rising sea levels are likely to change Southern California beaches in the coming century, but not in ways you might expect.
While some beaches may shrink or possibly disappear, others are poised to remain relatively large -- leaving an uneven distribution of economic gains and losses for coastal beach towns, according to a study by researchers at Duke University and five other institutions.
"Some beaches actually stand to benefit economically from sea level rise, creating winners and losers among California beach towns," said Linwood Pendleton, director ...
Trying to make a big decision while you're also preparing for a scary presentation? You might want to hold off on that. Feeling stressed changes how people weigh risk and reward. A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reviews how, under stress, people pay more attention to the upside of a possible outcome.
It's a bit surprising that stress makes people focus on the way things could go right, says Mara Mather of the University of Southern California, who cowrote the new review paper ...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Women gradually use condoms less frequently during their first year of college, according to a new study by researchers from The Miriam Hospital's Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine. This was particularly true for women who binge drink, have lower grade point averages or come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
The findings, published online in the Journal of Sex Research, offer some of the first clues to how condom use changes during the college years – a time when young people are sexually active and use condoms inconsistently.
"We ...
