Consumer neuroscience-as a valuable complement to traditional, largely behavioral, research methods-is attracting increasing interest from researchers of marketing and consumer behavior. Although this field has made very important contributions, most consumer neuroscience studies to date have mainly focused on individuals' brain responses to simple marketing stimuli in solitary, lab-based, albeit well-

Advertising plays a critical role in the commercial success of services and products. However, despite a long history of attempts to evaluate the efficacy of advertisements, actual objective, consistent means of assessing and anticipating whether an advertisement might be effective and why it would be expected to translate to actual, desired purchasing decisions remain elusive—especially as this regards advertisements' ability to resonate or create emotional connections across audiences. In this study, focusing on female participants, we employed functional near‐infrared spectroscopy to monitor brain activations over empathy and emotional contagion regions as individuals viewed advertisements, matched with a multi‐brain network model for assessing synchronicity patterns across all participants' brains. Study 1 demonstrated that high‐scoring advertisements induced more densely coupled brain activations among participants in their right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), tied to emotional empathy via embodied experience, and thus potentially representing shared understandings and emotional resonance among consumers. Study 2 replicated this finding with popular music and confirmed that density of the right IFG multi‐brain network could predict real‐world population‐level performance, thus presenting an intriguing new tool that might be coupled with other assessments.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the world economy and has, most presumably, exerted a great deal of stress on citizens, in turn leading to the call for timely assessments of how this period might actually impact individuals at the level of everyday well-being and in their behaviors such as consumer decisions. Through one pilot study and two online survey studies, we tentatively investigated this latter question, and demonstrated that the COVID-19 pandemic may increase perceived stress and impair individuals’ sleep quality, which in turn impels their irrational consumption. This research provides preliminary evidence for the impact of the present pandemic on irrational consumption and contributes to the literature on stress and consumer behavior.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only jeopardized people’s physical health, but also put additional strain on their mental health. This study explored the role of indoor natural elements (i.e., green plants) in relieving individuals’ mental stress during a prolonged stressful period. A pilot and three formal studies examined the effect of indoor green plants placed in living and working environments on people’s perceived stress during the pandemic and further uncovered its underlying mechanism emphasizing a mediating role of emotion. The pilot study confirmed that the severity of the pandemic positively correlated with individuals’ level of stress. Study 1 then demonstrated that indoor green plants in people’s living environments might reduce their perceived stress during the pandemic, which is referred to as the “plant effect”. Study 2 repeated the plant effect in a field experiment conducted in a working environment and Study 3 revealed a mediating role of positive emotion. This study provides preliminary evidence for the mitigating effect of indoor green plants on individuals’ mental stress during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The indoor green plants placed in living and working environments may elicit positive emotion, which in turn reduce people’s mental stress. In addition, our results reveal that growth status of the indoor green plants affected the plant effect as well.