Departmental Papers (ASC)
Document Type
Technical Report
Date of this Version
2-2016
Publication Source
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Volume
11
Issue
2
Start Page
204
Last Page
214
DOI
10.1093/scan/nsv108
Abstract
Mass media can powerfully affect health decision-making. Pre-testing through focus groups or surveys is a standard, though inconsistent, predictor of effectiveness. Converging evidence demonstrates that activity within brain systems associated with self-related processing can predict individual behavior in response to health messages. Preliminary evidence also suggests that neural activity in small groups can forecast population-level campaign outcomes. Less is known about the psychological processes that link neural activity and population-level outcomes, or how these predictions are affected by message content. We exposed 50 smokers to antismoking messages and used their aggregated neural activity within a ‘self-localizer’ defined region of medial prefrontal cortex to predict the success of the same campaign messages at the population level (n = 400 000 emails). Results demonstrate that: (i) independently localized neural activity during health message exposure complements existing self-report data in predicting population-level campaign responses (model combined R2 up to 0.65) and (ii) this relationship depends on message content—self-related neural processing predicts outcomes in response to strong negative arguments against smoking and not in response to compositionally similar neutral images. These data advance understanding of the psychological link between brain and large-scale behavior and may aid the construction of more effective media health campaigns.
Copyright/Permission Statement
© The Authors (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
Keywords
fMRI, self, MPFC, smoking, media effects, health communication
Recommended Citation
Falk, E. B., O'Donnell, M. B., Tompson, S., Gonzalez, R., Dal Cin, S., Strecher, V. J., Cummings, K. M., & An, L. (2016). Functional Brain Imaging Predicts Public Health Campaign Success. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11 (2), 204-214. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv108
Included in
Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment Commons, Health Communication Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Neurology Commons, Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Neurosciences Commons, Public Health Commons, Public Relations and Advertising Commons, Radiology Commons
Date Posted: 15 June 2018