Predicting persuasion-induced behavior change from the brain

Abstract

Although persuasive messages often alter people's self-reported attitudes and intentions to perform behaviors, these self-reports do not necessarily predict behavior change. We demonstrate that neural responses to persuasive messages can predict variability in behavior change in the subsequent week. Specifically, an a priori region of interest (ROI) in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) was reliably associated with behavior change (r = 0.49, p < 0.05). Additionally, an iterative cross-validation approach using activity in this MPFC ROI predicted an average 23% of the variance in behavior change beyond the variance predicted by self-reported attitudes and intentions. Thus, neural signals can predict behavioral changes that are not predicted from self-reported attitudes and intentions alone. Additionally, this is the first functional magnetic resonance imaging study to demonstrate that a neural signal can predict complex real world behavior days in advance.

Figures

Figure 1.

Neural prediction of behavior change. a, Scatterplot between activity in MPFC ROI and behavior change in the week following the persuasive messages (controlling for changes in self-reported attitudes and intentions) with an inset sagittal image displaying the location of the ROIs. b, Distribution of correlations between actual and predicted values of behavior change using a twofold cross-validation over 184,756 iterations (controlling for changes in self-reported attitudes and intentions).

Figure 2.

Regions associated with behavior change in a whole brain analysis. Significant correlations (p < 0.005; k = 10) were observed between behavior change, controlling for self-report measures, and MPFC, r = 0.64, tcluster = 3.52; precuneus, r = 0.71, tcluster = 4.93; pre-SMA, r = 0.59, tcluster = 3.10; motor cortex, r = 0.59, tcluster = 3.10. These regions were all observed by Soon et al. (2008) as predictors of spontaneous motor behavior, before and independent of consciously reportable behavioral intentions.