Various advocacy groups bombard citizens with messages via email, print ads, and television broadcasts. Some of these messages are meant to persuade citizens to perform a political action (e.g., sign petitions, contact their congresspersons, etc.), some are meant to pursuade them to buy certain products or subscribe to various services. Although research has shown that persuasive messages can change people's self-reported attitudes or intentions to perform certain actions, self-reports do not necessarily predict change in behavior-suggesting that some processes are not accessible to self-report measures. This project examines the extent to which neural responses can predict persuasion-induced human behavior beyond what is predicted by self-report measures. This project uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to determine the extent to which brain activity can predict real-world behavior in response to persuasive messages, and to study the underlying mechanisms that lead to effective persuasion. With the cooperation of political advocacy groups, this project conducts a field experiment to validate that messages predicted to be persuasive by brain data in the lab are in fact effective at persuading a large number of citizens in the real world. Ultimately, thee information provides basic scientific knowledge about the mechanisms of persuasion.
This project builds on previous work showing that neural activity in the brain can predict individual and population behavioral change in response to health communications. This project examines the extent to which activity in brain regions implicated in self-related and/or reward relevant processing predicts behavior, and provides basic-science insight about common and divergent mechanisms leading to persuasion in different domains.
Broader Impacts:
In addition to the project's contribution to the basic science of social influence, the study stands to make immediate and broad impacts. Execution of the research will have broad impacts on the training of a next generation of scientists. As a first generation Filipino immigrant and as the first person to receive a doctorate in his family, the PI has a commitment to broadening participation by underrepresented groups in the fields of political science and cognitive neuroscience. During his postdoctoral training, the PI will mentor undergraduate researchers from diverse backgrounds, work with groups that broaden civic participation in underrepresented groups, and present the research findings to a wide range of academic and nonacademic audiences.
