How do we make decisions as consumers? What do we pay attention to, and how do our initial responses predict our final choices? To what extent are these processes unconscious and cannot be reflected in overt reports? This course will provide you with an introduction to some of the most basic methods in the emerging fields of consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing. You will learn about the methods employed and what they mean. You will learn about the basic brain mechanisms in consumer choice, and how to stay updated on these topics. The course will give an overview of the current and future uses of neuroscience in business.
Case: Knutson et al + Pessiglione et al, method = fMRI
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From the course by Copenhagen Business School
An Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing
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From the lesson
What is Neuromarketing all About?
We first need to define the field – what are the key concepts, what are the key methods and reasons for employing neuroscience to study consumers and communication effects? In this module, we will introduce the topic and how some specific studies provide key insights into what neuroscience has to offer in relationship with more traditional methods.
Meet the Instructors
Thomas Zoëga RamsøyPhD in Neurobiology, Certified Neuropsychologist & Assistant Professor in Marketing & Neuroscience
Head of the Center for Decision Neuroscience, Department of Marketing at Copenhagen Business School, and Head of Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance at Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre
Hello.
This is the first studies and methods section for week one.
Here we will talk about two studies and one method.
We will talk about the study by Brian Knutson and
colleagues on the neural predictors of purchase and we will talk about a paper by
Mathias Pessiglione on the subliminal effects on risk taking.
What we'll also talk about is a method that is related to consuming neuroscience
and neuromarketing, namely fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging.
The question about how we are making our choices seems to be one of
the core topics in neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience.
Or we're taking our choices after deliberately thinking through everything,
collecting information, and
then making up our minds before we actually execute the decision.
Or is it so that there are some indications, some emotional responses, or
even some unconscious responses that predict what we
are going to do subsequently.
In a study by Brun Knutson and colleagues in the journal Urum in 2006.
This was actually exactly the kind of question that we're interested
in answering.
What the researchers did was to first present a product to a participant,
and then they were given a price.
And then after that, they were given the option of making the choice of buying or
not buying the product.
So for four seconds, they first looked at a product.
He was showing that as a chocolate, for example.
It could also be many other, other kinds of goods.
For four seconds after that, they were shown a specific price for the product.
And finally for four seconds they were given the option to choose whether to
buy the products or not for that given price.
Prior to the study initiation they were given a,
an amount of money that they can spend or save during the trial.
The participants went through this task several times,
allowing the researchers and aggregate multiple responses,
both for rejection but also accept of buying a product.
What the researchers were able to do then was to go back to the data and
look at the time of the product presentation, but
also the prize presentation, and finally the choice execution.
And look at whether they could identify specific neural responses that
would predict subsequent choice.
During the first four seconds they found that the strong reactivation in
a particular part of the brain, the deep structural core, the nucleus accumbens,
part of the basal gandia, was responsible, was related to subsequent choice.
Strong responses in the nucleus accumbens during product viewing
was highly related to subsequent choice.
So the more activation they found in this particular part of the brain,
the more likely it was that people would subsequently buy the product.
When people look at the price, stronger activation in the insula,
another part of the brain related to emotional responses for example.
Stronger activation in this part of the brain were related to longer
likelihood of purchase.
So this means that activation levels in
the insular were negatively related to purchase.
And finally, at the time of making the choice, stronger activation in
the medial prefrontal cortex were indicative, predictive of choice.
The crucial aspect here was that the researchers also asked people when they
felt like making up their minds and when they felt like actually making the choice.
Here they found out people responded that it was during the four, four last seconds.
The actual time of saying yes or no.
This was the time that pe, pe, people felt like making up their minds.
So the interesting conclusion here is that product choice might
be predicted 8 to 12 seconds prior to the actual decision making or
prior to even people feeling that they are making up their minds.
And also, we can identify a particular part the brain,
the nucleus accumbens, which is also called the ventral striatum,
which is indicative of wanting, and indicative of product desire, if you like.
In another study by Mathias Pessiglione and colleagues these research,
researchers were interested in whether people can learn the contingency and
to make right decisions, even outside the realms of consciousness.
In a study, when people made 50-50 choices, basically a coin flip.
What the researchers did was also to present subliminal cues.
They presented different abstract symbols.
And these symbols were indicative of either subsequent wins or
subsequent losses.
Or also they didn't predict any outcome at all.
The researchers then asked, can it be possible that these abstract symbols
can actually predict subsequent choice and actually influence people's choices.
What they found was that first of all people learned the contingencies.
They learned that when a particular abstract symbol was shown that would
increase the likelihood or associated with increased likelihood of winning.
People tended to go for the gamble.
They are tended to accept the gamble.
Other abstract symbols that were more related to
losing led to people not accepting the gambles.
Interesting enough when the researchers asked the people why they made
those choices they always responded, well, it's always this is just a mad guess.
You know, it's the 50-50 gamble.
So I don't feel like anything but just making a random guess.
So consciously, people were just making random guesses.
While subconsciously, there was learning effects.
The researchers did an fMRI study at the time to study the neural foundations of
this learning.
And what they found was that the particular part of
the brain called the ventral striatum.
Which we also saw in the previous example.
Which is also called nucleus accumbens,
was more engaged during this learning task.
So this shows that part of the brain called ventral striatum is highly
engaged when it comes to learning the contingencies unconsciously and
driving people's decision.
So this means that the ventral striatum does not necessarily need to be
consciously accessed, it doesn't need to be
part of our conscious experience in order for us to still make right decisions.
So let's have a look at the methods.
fMRI is an abbreviation for functional magnetic resonance imaging.
If we look at that definition we can see that functional means it is a measure of
brain function, because it's a measure of brain activation and not structure.
Magnetic resonance is basically, basically a use of changes in
the magnetic properties of the tissue in the body and the brain to allow
us to make contrasts and be able to image the brain and the body.
Let's look a bit deeper into what that means.
If you look at how the fMRI signal works, what we're going to focus on in particular
is the BOLD signal, the BOLD which stands for blood-oxygen-level dependent signal.
When a neuron is active we see that it's
extracting its oxygen and energy from the blood stream locally.
This is seen if you just focus in on the signal and the current
the signal in the particular region, in that particular region of the frame.
You will see that as a drop in the signal.
The reason that we're seeing a small drop in the signal, is that oxygen and
consumption oxygen leads to a smaller amount of oxygen regionally.
And oxygen, since it has a magnetic property,
the magnetic resonance imaging machine can pick that signal change up.
So a part, particular part of the brain that is
active it is initially seen as a drop in the signal.
This is what I call the initial bit.
Now the initial bit is very, very tiny, and very, very small.
It's really hard to, to to measure.
What then happens is that in the same region that has just consumed oxygen and
glucose, for example, receives a huge influx of fresh blood
that is rich in oxygen and rich in other compounds, which is the glucose.
And it actually is an overshoot.
It's actually too much that is provided to that region,
and what we see there in the MR machine is a huge increase in the signal change.
This is the actually measure that we're using,
when we're using fMRI to measure brain activation.
And then after that we see a normalization,
actually undershoot after that.
Then in come the stabilization, over time, in the same region.
So this means that when we're measuring the fMRI, and
we're using fMRI to measure brain activation.
It's an indirect measure of brain activation because it's not
a direct measure of brain activation in but in itself.
But the overshoot of influx of oxygen-rich blood to a region that has been active.
This is a particular function of the fMRI,
which is very different from other methods.
This allows us to look at several different ways how brain
activation occurs.
For example, if you want to study two different tasks.
We're going to compare two different tasks, such as looking at aversive or
negative faces, as opposed to looking at neutral faces.
If we want to understand which part of the brain there is responsible for
detecting and looking at negative faces.
We have to compare that to something.
So to compare the negative faces to a neutral face.
That basically cancels out all the activations that is related to
facial coding, but leaves all the activation that is unique to the contrast.
That is unique to the difference between the two images which is
the emotional display.
Here we're showing three different kinds of aversive faces that you could be
shown one at a time, and
then compare that to different neutral faces that are also showing one at a time.
What we're going to find as you can see in the bottom here is an increase in
activation when people are looking at the aversive faces.
Than neutral faces in regions such as the amygdala which you can see here in
the both, both sides of the amygdala, the bilateral activation of amygdala.
And also on, in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex which is as you can see
on the bottom right.
So basically fMRI allows us to contrast different methods.
FMRI is, of course, also a tool you can use for
several other purposes, but this is one way to use the fMRI machine.
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