Annenberg study finds patterns in brain responses to persuasive messaging

A study published by the Annenberg School for Communication’s Communication Neuroscience Lab suggests that certain brain responses can help predict whether a message will resonate widely. 

The findings, published in PNAS Nexus earlier this month, draw on a large combined dataset to examine how the brain processes persuasive content. The international research team, led by Annenberg professor Emily Falk, aggregated data from more than 500 participants across 16 functional MRI studies. 

For the studies, brain scans were collected while individuals viewed a broad range of real-world messages spanning public health campaigns, climate communication, YouTube videos, movie trailers, and crowdfunding pitches, according to Penn Today.

Across these varied contexts, the researchers found consistent patterns, including higher activity in neural systems associated with anticipating rewards. Moreover, thinking about others corresponded with messages that ultimately proved more effective at the population level. 

Falk explained that these results build on longstanding theories in communication and psychology. 

“Existing theories had suggested that decision-making is driven by brain activity in predictable brain systems,” she told Penn Today. “One associated with personal rewards, and the other related to understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings.”

What had been missing, she said, was large-scale evidence showing that these systems operate similarly across different types of persuasive content rather than within narrow domains like marketing or public health.

The team also examined activity in brain regions related to emotional processing. While those areas were associated with message effectiveness when averaging across large samples, they did not reliably predict whether the specific individuals being scanned would change their own attitudes or behaviors. 

Christin Scholz, a professor at the University of Amsterdam, co-led the project with Falk. He explained that the finding above suggests emotional responses may function more uniformly across groups, even if they do not capture individual-level differences. 

“These findings are in line with the idea that lower-level responses to messages, especially on an emotional or interpersonal level, may be more universal and thus more generalizable from individual brains to larger groups across message domains,” Scholz told Penn Today.

The authors emphasized that identifying neural patterns that consistently correspond with successful persuasion may help communicators in health, politics, marketing, and entertainment develop content that is more likely to engage broad audiences.

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