Activity in the brain’s valuation and mentalizing networks is associated with propagation of online recommendations

Word of mouth recommendations influence a wide range of choices and behaviors. What takes place in the mind of recommendation receivers that determines whether they will be successfully influenced? Prior work suggests that brain systems implicated in assessing the value of stimuli (i.e., subjective...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2021-05, Vol.11 (1), p.11196-11196, Article 11196
Main Authors: Baek, Elisa C., O’Donnell, Matthew Brook, Scholz, Christin, Pei, Rui, Garcia, Javier O., Vettel, Jean M., Falk, Emily B.
Format: Article
Language:English
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631/378/2645
631/378/3919
631/477/2811
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:Word of mouth recommendations influence a wide range of choices and behaviors. What takes place in the mind of recommendation receivers that determines whether they will be successfully influenced? Prior work suggests that brain systems implicated in assessing the value of stimuli (i.e., subjective valuation) and understanding others’ mental states (i.e., mentalizing) play key roles. The current study used neuroimaging and natural language classifiers to extend these findings in a naturalistic context and tested the extent to which the two systems work together or independently in responding to social influence. First, we show that in response to text-based social media recommendations, activity in both the brain’s valuation system and mentalizing system was associated with greater likelihood of opinion change. Second, participants were more likely to update their opinions in response to negative, compared to positive, recommendations, with activity in the mentalizing system scaling with the negativity of the recommendations. Third, decreased functional connectivity between valuation and mentalizing systems was associated with opinion change. Results highlight the role of brain regions involved in mentalizing and positive valuation in recommendation propagation, and further show that mentalizing may be particularly key in processing negative recommendations, whereas the valuation system is relevant in evaluating both positive and negative recommendations.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-90420-2