Using portable EEGs, researchers found that when groups of people watch the same health promotion videos, their brain activity syncs up, indicating that the message has gone beyond being seen and heard. This approach could lead to ‘neural’ focus groups and more effective health campaigns.
Think about an advertising jingle you heard as a kid but still remember. That, right there, is an example of effective marketing. These days, marketing is tough. Competition for attention, shorter attention spans, misinformation and distrust, personal algorithms and echo chambers make it increasingly difficult to market products effectively, especially critical messages like health campaigns.
Researchers from the University of Konstanz in Germany led a recent study using portable electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brain activity of groups of people watching videos of health messages about risky alcohol consumption. Their findings put us a step closer to what would effectively be next-level focus groups, so-called neuromarketing that uses brain-based information to make marketing more effective.
“Unfortunately, not all health campaigns are equally effective, as our research on the effectiveness of anti-alcohol health campaigns has shown,” said Harald Schupp, a psychology professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the study’s co-corresponding author.
For decades, focus groups have been used because they’re an effective way of gathering qualitative data and insights from potential consumers. The researchers in the present study thought the process could be improved by complementing these self-report measures with objective, neuroscientific ones that may be outside of conscious awareness.
“With neural measures, we can track the processes occurring in the brains of study participants as they watch these videos – something we cannot do with a survey,” Schupp said. “Neural measures thus provide us with tools for analyzing dynamic stimuli – like video or audio recordings – and, when combined with survey data, they greatly strengthen the overall analysis.”
They used inter-subject correction (ISC) analysis, which assesses how a stimulus, such as a video, triggers similar brain responses across audience members. So, instead of collecting neural metrics at the individual level, ISC identifies common effects seen in the brains of multiple subjects. The researchers had, in a previous study, shown that strong health messages against risk alcohol use produced heightened EEG-ISC in the lab. With this study they wanted to collect neural data from several study participants grouped together in a regular room, so they used a low-density portable EEG.
EEG is a non-invasive way of recording brain-generated electrical waves via electrodes applied directly to the scalp, or a cap with electrodes in it can be worn instead. The number of sensors used to record brain activity can vary from one to hundreds. A standard EEG uses 19 to 32 electrodes, a high-density EEG uses 64, 128, or 256, and a low-density EEG uses between one and 32 electrodes. In this study, the EEG was a 24-electrode system. Data from independent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans was used to link their ISC findings to particular brain regions.
“The present study is an effort to move health communication neuroscience from a basic feasibility – or ‘can it work?’ – stage to a more practical implementation – or ‘does it work in practice’ – stage,” said the researchers. “To this end, we used a series of strong and weak video health messages against risky alcohol use. These messages previously elicited distinct differences in both self-reported perceived message effectiveness and synchronized brain reactions, as captured by fMRI- and EEG-ISC.”
Forty-one participants, 24 females and 17 males, with an average age of 23, were recruited for the study. Half participated in a group watching session, where six participants at a time watched video health messages while sitting in a room in a semicircle. The other half watched the videos one person at a time in the same room. Laptops received the wirelessly transmitted EEG signal.
For each video, participants rated its perceived effectiveness, argument strength, and the amount of threatening or shocking content. To gauge change in alcohol-related risk perceptions and behavior, self-report data about alcohol consumption was collected prior to treatment, immediately after the video session, and at a four-week follow-up.
The study’s findings demonstrated several things of importance. First, there was a high degree of correlation between ISC data collected in the previous study (lab setting, high-density 256-electrode EEG) and data collected by the low-density EEG in the present one. Second, the ISC data captured replicated the findings of the earlier study, namely, that strong health messages were deemed to be more effective because they enhanced inter-subject correlation. Third, the research demonstrated that it’s feasible to assess neural data in a group setting. Finally, even using low-density portable EEG, the regions of the brain impacted by strong messaging – commonly linked to personal relevance, the outward expression of feelings and emotion (affect), and attention – were the same as in the previous work. One thing differed between the previous study and this one: in this one, there were no significant changes in alcohol risk perception and behavior.
“This shows that an important signal is being received, one that goes beyond mere seeing and hearing,” said the study’s lead and co-corresponding author, Martin Imhof, from the University of Konstanz’s Department of Psychology. “We assume that what we are observing here is the audience engaging with the message of the videos.”
While the findings indicate that portable EEG could one day transform focus groups, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Although cheaper than the lab-based, high-density units, low-density EEG is still comparatively expensive – and complex. Once the setup is made simpler and cheaper, it could make health campaigns – or any marketing campaign, when you think about it – more effective.
“This is why we need to build on our proof-of-concept studies and consider how we can make these methods useful for healthcare organizations or agencies as they develop their campaigns, even without our technical resources,” Schupp said.
The study was published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Source: University of Konstanz
