Neural responses to content may serve as universal indicators

An analysis of brain scans from 572 people reveals that activity in brain regions linked to reward and social processing can predict how effective messages will be. The work is published in PNAS Nexus.

Christin Scholz, Hang-Yee Chan, Emily Falk, and colleagues pooled data from 16 functional MRI studies to explore how the human brain responds to persuasive messages across various contexts, including public health campaigns, crowdfunding sites, movie trailers, and YouTube videos.

Across these diverse settings, the researchers found that effective messages activated brain regions involved in anticipating and receiving rewards, as well as those related to understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings—a process known as mentalizing. These brain responses predicted not only which messages were preferred by participants who underwent brain scans, but also which messages were well received by broader audiences whose brains were not scanned.

Brain activity associated with emotion predicted message effectiveness in large audiences but not in the individuals who were scanned. These results suggest that certain aspects of our neural responses—such as whether a message prompts us to think about others or evokes emotion—may serve as universal indicators of persuasiveness across people and contexts.

According to the authors, these insights deepen our understanding of what makes a message effective and could inspire new, broadly applicable persuasion strategies.

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PNAS Nexus