How real-life health messages engage our brains: Shared processing of effective anti-alcohol videos

Abstract

Health communication via mass media is an important strategy when targeting risky drinking, but many questions remain about how health messages are processed and how they unfold their effects within receivers. Here we examine how the brains of young adults—a key target group for alcohol prevention—‘tune in’ to real-life health prevention messages about risky alcohol use. In a first study, a large sample of authentic public service announcements (PSAs) targeting the risks of alcohol was characterized using established measures of message effectiveness. In the main study, we used inter-subject correlation analysis of fMRI data to examine brain responses to more and less effective PSAs in a sample of young adults. We find that more effective messages command more similar responses within widespread brain regions, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, insulae and precuneus. In previous research, these regions have been related to processing narratives, emotional stimuli, self-relevance and attention towards salient stimuli. The present study thus suggests that more effective health prevention messages have greater ‘neural reach’, i.e. they engage the brains of audience members’ more widely. This work outlines a promising strategy for assessing the effects of health communication at a neural level.

The persuasion network is modulated by drug-use risk and predicts anti-drug message effectiveness

“…We also know that the MFG is implicated in processing audiovisual narratives ( Wilson et al , 2008 ) like the PSAs used in this study. However, a recent study investigating intersubject correlations (ISC) among both high- and low-risk subjects viewing health-message PSAs, did not observe ISCs in this region ( Imhof et al , 2017 ). To be clear, we are not arguing that the absence of a statistically significant result implies no effect.…”

“…counterarguing, message disengagement) or not. With two exceptions ( Weber et al , 2014 ; Imhof et al , 2017 ), tests using an ELM framework are largely absent from the persuasion neuroscience literature.…”

The Effectiveness of Online Messages for Promoting Smoking Cessation Resources: Predicting Nationwide Campaign Effects From Neural Responses in the EX Campaign

“…Importantly, population-level effects on click-through rates can only emerge if the relevant message—in this case, the banner—can collectively influence a large number of individuals (Imhof et al, 2017 , 2020 ; Grall and Schmälzle, 2020 ). Our strategy to capture brain activity within a smaller sample of current smokers exposed to the same messages probes this collective-level response to messaging.…”

The Influence of Health Messages in Nudging Consumption of Whole Grain Pasta

“…We suggest that attentional account could explain why the latter option is more preferred, while the first appear as less attractive. For instance, the attentional processing is strongly related to different contents of the health benefit [55] as well as the specific topic and audience that the message is addressed to. However, the most common features that may influence persuasion is the perceived argument strength, which refers to individual perceptions of the quality and persuasiveness of the message [56].…”