Brain scans reveal increased neural effort when marketing messages miss the mark

Marketing professionals and business leaders face a persistent challenge in communication. A campaign that resonates deeply with one demographic might fall completely flat with another, even when the product remains the same. This variability often leads to wasted resources and missed opportunities. For decades, psychology has offered a partial explanation known as the “affective-cognitive matching effect.” This theory suggests that people are generally more persuaded by messages that align with their personal psychological orientation—whether they are driven by emotion (affect) or logic (cognition).

While the behavioral evidence for this effect is substantial, the biological machinery behind it has remained largely a black box. It has been unclear how a person’s baseline neural structure—the way their brain is wired when they are doing nothing at all—might prepare them to accept or reject a specific type of sales pitch.

A new study published in Psychophysiology seeks to illuminate this neural architecture. The research, titled “Brain and Behavior in Persuasion: The Role of Affective-Cognitive Matching,” investigates the connection between resting brain states and active responses to persuasive messages. The investigation aimed to determine if the brain’s intrinsic connectivity predicts how individuals process and evaluate advertisements that appeal to either their hearts or their heads.

Psychology of Selling

Sign up for our free weekly newsletter for the latest insights.

Name

Email

Bridging the Gap Between Brain and Behavior

The research was led by Simone Di Plinio from the Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences at Chieti-Pescara University in Italy. He collaborated with a team of researchers including A. Aquino, G. Haddock, F. R. Alparone, and S. J. H. Ebisch. The team sought to address a specific gap in neuroscience literature. Prior studies have looked at how the brain reacts during a task or how the brain is connected at rest, but rarely how these two distinct states interact during the process of persuasion.

To understand the study, it is necessary to grasp two primary psychological concepts used by the researchers. The first is the “Need for Affect” (NFA). This trait describes the motivation to approach or avoid emotion-inducing situations. Individuals with high NFA value feelings and use them to shape their judgments. The second concept is the “Need for Cognition” (NFC). This trait reflects a tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful thinking and analysis.

The researchers hypothesized that these psychological traits are not merely software running on the brain but are rooted in the brain’s hardware. They focused on “intrinsic connectivity,” which refers to the functional organization of the brain when a person is at rest. They proposed that these baseline networks might prime an individual to process information in a specific way, acting as a neural filter for incoming persuasive messages.

Constructing the Experiment

The methodology involved a sequence of behavioral assessments and advanced neuroimaging techniques. The study recruited 35 healthy Italian adults, comprising 20 women and 15 men with a mean age of 25. The sample size was consistent with standard practices in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research.

The first step involved characterizing the psychological profile of each participant. The researchers administered standardized scales to measure NFA and NFC. By comparing these scores, they calculated an “Orientation” score for each person. A higher score indicated a preference for affective (emotional) information, while a lower score indicated a preference for cognitive (rational) information.

Following the psychological profiling, participants underwent fMRI scanning. The imaging process was divided into two distinct phases. The first phase was a resting-state scan. Participants were instructed to simply look at a fixation cross on a screen for several minutes. This allowed the researchers to map the “intrinsic” connections of the brain—essentially observing which brain regions communicate with one another when no specific task is required.

Designing the Persuasion Task

The second phase of scanning involved a “task-based” fMRI. During this session, participants viewed a series of persuasive messages designed to sell various consumer products. The researchers created 20 specific advertisements. Half were designed to be affective, emphasizing emotions and sensations. For example, an ad for a pullover might read, “The soft wool of the pullover ‘Tender’ gives a fresh scent all day.”

The other half were cognitive messages, highlighting product features and technical qualities. A corresponding cognitive ad might read, “The new full-resistant pullover is made with 100% merino wool.” To ensure the study measured the response to the message style rather than the product itself, the researchers controlled for the content’s valence, ensuring all descriptions were positive.

As the participants read these messages in the scanner, the fMRI machine recorded changes in blood flow to various parts of the brain, a proxy for neural activity. After viewing each message, participants provided two ratings: how much they liked the product and how likely they were to purchase it. These ratings were combined into a single “Evaluation” score.

Measuring Brain Connectivity

To analyze the massive amount of data generated by the scans, the team used graph-theoretical metrics. They focused on a measurement called the “participation coefficient.” This metric assesses how extensively a specific brain region, or node, interacts with other distinct networks in the brain. A node with a high participation coefficient acts as a hub, facilitating communication across different modules of the brain.

The researchers were particularly interested in the frontoparietal network. This area of the brain is often associated with executive control and the integration of information. By mapping these hubs during the resting state, the team could test whether a well-connected brain at rest behaves differently when confronted with an emotional or logical advertisement.

Findings on Neural Effort and Mismatch

The analysis revealed a distinct pattern regarding how the brain exerts effort during persuasion. The researchers looked at the difference in brain activity between the affective and cognitive conditions. They found a negative association between this difference in activity and the participant’s subjective evaluation of the ad.

When the type of message was incongruent with the participant’s evaluation—for example, if they gave a low rating to a message type they usually prefer, or if the message style did not match the product’s perceived value—the brain exhibited higher levels of activity. The researchers interpreted this as a sign of cognitive strain. When the message and the evaluation did not align, the brain had to recruit more resources to process the information. This effect was slightly more pronounced in the left hemisphere, which is often linked to analytical processing.

The Role of Neural Hubs

The most specific findings emerged when the researchers looked at the interaction between the resting-state brain and the participants’ psychological orientation. The data showed that the “participation coefficient”—the measure of how connected a brain region is—played a significant role, but this role changed depending on whether the person was an “affective” or “cognitive” type.

In individuals with a high affective orientation, highly connected nodes in the frontoparietal network became more active when the message matched their preference. For these people, the brain’s integration centers engaged deeply when they encountered emotional content that aligned with their nature.

In contrast, for individuals with a high cognitive orientation, these same highly connected nodes became more active during incongruent conditions. Their integration centers appeared to kick into gear when they encountered a mismatch, potentially analyzing why the information did not fit their expectations or resolving the conflict between the message style and their analytical mindset.

Business Applications: The Science of Alignment

These findings offer concrete implications for business professionals involved in marketing, leadership, and communication strategies. The study provides biological validation for the practice of market segmentation based on psychographics rather than just demographics. It suggests that tailoring a message to an audience’s motivational orientation is not merely a stylistic choice but a way to optimize neural processing.

For businesses, the data indicates that alignment matters. When a message matches a consumer’s orientation, the brain processes it differently than when it does not. For an emotionally oriented audience, matching the message to their “feeling” state engages their brain’s integration hubs, potentially leading to a smoother path to persuasion. Conversely, presenting mismatched information causes the brain to work harder, triggering a spike in neural activity that signifies cognitive resistance.

Marketing executives might use this insight to test campaign materials not just for clarity, but for “processing ease” among specific target groups. If a product is technical but the target audience is high in Need for Affect, a purely logical pitch might trigger the neural strain observed in this study. Re-framing the technical details through an emotional narrative could reduce that friction.

Pathways for Future Research

This study opens several new avenues for inquiry in the field of consumer neuroscience. The current research utilized text-based advertisements for consumer products. Future investigations could examine whether these neural patterns hold true for other forms of media, such as video or audio advertisements.

Additionally, the study focused on positive messages. It remains to be seen how the brain’s resting connectivity influences the processing of fear-based or negative appeals, which are common in insurance marketing or public health campaigns. The researchers also identified a need to move beyond correlation. Future studies might use non-invasive brain stimulation to temporarily alter the activity of the frontoparietal network. This would allow scientists to see if changing the brain’s connectivity actually changes a person’s susceptibility to different types of persuasive messages.

Finally, while this study looked at “Evaluation” (liking and intent to buy), future work could measure actual purchasing behavior. Connecting these neural signatures to real-world transactions would provide the ultimate test of the affective-cognitive matching effect.