Poster A30, Tuesday, August 20, 2019, 10:15 am – 12:00 pm, Restaurant Hall
Neural Mechanisms of Language Use in Economic Decision-making
Siyuan Zhou1, Xialu Bai1, Yu Zhai1, Kaiyu Li1, Faxin Zhou1, Yuhang Long1, Hui Zhao1, Jinglu Chen1, Chunming Lu;1Beijing Normal University
While consumption is an evolutionarily important social behavior, language plays a key role in precisely communicating complex information between a seller and a buyer. However, neural mechanism remains unclear about how a seller successfully persuaded a buyer to buy her/his products. Previous studies studied this question mainly from a single person perspective. The present study addressed this issue by employing the fNIRS-based hyperscanning approach. One hundred and fifty-six participants were recruited and randomly split into 52 3-member groups. Two members of a group were assigned a role of seller, whereas the third member was assigned a role of customer. In the experiment, the two sellers took turns to introduce their products to a customer and persuaded her/him to buy her/his product. The customer was allowed to ask questions. Moreover, the customers’ decision was dynamically assessed during the selling process. Brain activities were collected from three persons simultaneously. Interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) was computed for each pair of the participants. Results showed a significantly enhanced INS between the customers and the salesmen who succeeded in selling compared to that between the costumers and the salesman who failed in selling at TPJ. And the enhancement of the INS positively correlated with the difference in selling performance of succeeded and failed salesmen. Moreover, the enhancement of the INS also positively correlated with the customer’s dynamic purchase intention. While TPJ is the key brain areas of the theory of mind, our findings suggest that people gradually make decisions in the process of verbal communication, which is modulated by the mentalizing process. These findings provide important insights into the neural mechanisms of language use in an economic decision process.
Themes: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics, Meaning: Combinatorial Semantics
Method: Functional Imaging