Interesting article

Adam W . Craig, Yuliya Komarova Loureiro, Stacy Wood, Jennifer M.C . Vendemia (2011). Suspicious Minds: Exploring Neural Processes During Exposure to Deceptive Advertising. Journal of Marketing Research. Ahead of Print.

doi: 10.1509/jmr.09.0007

Suspicious Minds: Exploring Neural Processes During Exposure to Deceptive Advertising

Adam W. Craig, ¹

¹Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Business Administration, University of South Florida.

adamwcraig@usf.edu
Yuliya Komarova Loureiro, ²

²Assistant Professor of Marketing, Fordham University.

ykomarova@fordham.edu
Stacy Wood, ³

³Langdon Distinguished University Professor of Marketing, Poole College of Management, North Carolina State University.

stacy_wood@ncsu.edu
Jennifer M.C. Vendemia⁴

⁴Director of the Center for Advanced Deception Detection and Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina.

jmcv@sc.edu

Abstract

When viewing advertisements, consumers must decide what to believe and what is meant to deceive. Accordingly, much behavioral research has explored strategies and outcomes of how consumers process persuasive messages that vary in perceived sincerity. New neuroimaging methods enable researchers to augment this knowledge by exploring the cognitive mechanisms underlying such processing. The current study collects neuroimaging data while participants are exposed to advertisements with differing levels of perceived message deceptiveness (believable, moderately deceptive, and highly deceptive). The functional magnetic resonance imaging data, combined with an additional behavioral study, offer evidence of two noteworthy results. First, confirming multistage frameworks of persuasion, the authors observe two distinct stages of brain activity: (1) precuneus activation at earlier stages and (2) superior temporal sulcus and temporal-parietal junction activation at later stages. Second, the authors observe disproportionately greater brain activity associated with claims that are moderately deceptive than those that are either believable or highly deceptive. These results provoke new thinking about what types of claims garner consumer attention and which consumers may be particularly vulnerable to deceptive advertising.