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Original Research ARTICLE

This article is part of a Research Topic

Neural correlates of attitude change following positive and negative advertisements

Junko Kato^1*, Hiroko Ide¹, Ikuo Kabashima¹, Hiroshi Kadota², Kouji Takano² and Kenji Kansaku^2*

Graduate School of Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan

Cognitive Functions Section, Department of Rehabilitation for Sensory Functions, Research Institute of National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities, Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan

Understanding changes in attitudes towards others is critical to understanding human behaviour. Neuropolitical studies have found that the activation of emotion-related areas in the brain is linked to resilient political preferences, and neuroeconomic research has analysed the neural correlates of social preferences that favour or oppose consideration of intrinsic rewards. This study aims to identify the neural correlates in the prefrontal cortices of changes in political attitudes toward others that are linked to social cognition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments have presented videos from previous electoral campaigns and television commercials for major cola brands and then used the subjectś self-rated affi nity toward political candidates as behavioural indicators. After viewing negative campaign videos, subjects showing stronger fMRI activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex lowered their ratings of the candidate they originally supported more than did those with smaller fMRI signal changes in the same region. Subjects showing stronger activation in the medial prefrontal cortex tended to increase their ratings more than did those with less activation. The same regions were not activated by viewing negative advertisements for cola. Correlations between the selfrated values and the neural signal changes underscore the metric representation of observed decisions (i.e., whether to support or not) in the brain. This indicates that neurometric analysis may contribute to the exploration of the neural correlates of daily social behaviour.

Keywords:

attitude changes, fMRI, neuropolitics, neuroeconomics, human

Citation:

Kato J, Ide H, Kabashima I, Kadota H, Takano K and Kansaku K (2009). Neural correlates of attitude change following positive and negative advertisements. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 3:6. doi:10.3389/neuro.08.006.2009

Received:

05 February 2009;

Paper pending published:

23 February 2009;

Accepted:

06 May 2009;

Published online:

18 May 2009.

Edited by:

Daeyeol Lee, Yale University, USA

Reviewed by:

Ming Hsu, University of Illinois at Urbana, USA
Daeyeol Lee, Yale University, USA

© 2009 Kato, Ide, Kabashima, Kadota, Takano and Kansaku. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

*Correspondence:

Dr. Junko Kato, The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Law and Politics, 7 3-1 Hongo Bunkyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan. e-mail: katoj@j.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Dr. Kenji Kansaku, Cognitive Functions Section, Department of Rehabilitation for Sensory Functions, Research Institute of National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities, 4 1 Namiki, Tokorozawa, Saitama 359 8555, Japan. e-mail: kansaku-kenji@rehab.go.jp