More Political Ads Publicity for Angelini

See the interview of James Angelini, Ph.D., at the University of Delaware's UDaily.

“What I think the producers of these messages have to realize is that they cannot take it to the extreme that some political advertisements have gone over the past eight to 12 years,” Angelini said.

Brandon Has a P300 ... and Lives to Tell

For fun today in the lab, we decided to see whether we could measure EEG activity using our Coulbourn Instruments LabLinc V system.

So poor Brandon Nutting's forehead got scrubbed, we attached some sensors, and collected some data. We don't have a cap yet, so we were limited to the forehead.

Here you see Event Related Potentials to a 100 ms 70 dB audio tone with a 10 ms rise time.

There were 49 trials.

You can see a recognizable P300 component about 300 ms after stimulus offset. You can also see a N100 in the Fp1 component.

The black (F7) and red (F8) locations were collected at the sides of his forehead, and the blue (Fp1) location was collected at the left-center of the forehead.

You can check out the locations of the International 10-20 System here.

Thanks to Justin Keene and Wes Wise for helping this experiment today. In under three hours, we took the equipment out of the box, wrote the collection program, collected the data, reduced the data in MATLAB, and plotted it. Not bad for a Sunday afternoon.

(And, yes, Brandon and I are both wearing Indiana shirts. Go Hoosiers!)

Angelini in Newsweek: Startling Political Ads

My co-author on a study of negative political ads was featured in an online Newsweek segment today. Read the comments of James Angelini, Ph.D., online, in a piece titled, Expertinent: The Biology of Negative Advertising.

The original research was published in the Journal of Advertising titled, Psychophysiological and memory effects of negative political ads: Aversive, arousing and well remembered, and a PDF of the research can be retrieved for research purposes here.

Remember This: Your Brain Is Cool

I spent much of Friday night and Saturday in the office analyzing data for a study we conducted on in-game advertising (the lead author is Harsha Gangadharbatla, now of the University of Oregon).

During the course of the racing (car) game, participants drove under five billboards. They were not told anything about the billboards, and the idea was to check whether they noticed. We measured physiology to determine whether they were subconsciously noticing (they were), and we later measured their memory to see whether they actually stored the brand names.

First, participants were asked to freely recall the brands that they saw. Performance on this task was not especially good (16%). Later, participants were asked to recognize the brands among other brands in the same product category. Performance on this task was about 40%.

The main points of the study are pretty interesting; however, one little observationt that will not make it in the final paper was pretty interesting.

For each of the five brands, participants could either recall it or not. Furthermore, they could recognize it or not. Obviously, some people were more likely to pay attention to the driving (gamers, it turns out), and some people were more likely to pay attention to the billboards (nongamers, it turns out). Harsha knew this would be the case, but I did not.

For each brand, we could examine whether the probability it was recalled was related to the probability that it was recognized. Perhaps participants good at recall were simply good at recognition.

But this was not the case with our data. For each brand, the probability that it was recalled was significantly correlated with the probability that it was recognized. Furthermore, for each brand, the probability that it was recalled was most strongly related to its own probability of recall.

It could be the case that recalling Brand A was most strongly related to recognizing Brand B -- perhaps even by random chance. But this was not the case. In every case, A was most strongly related to A, and so on.

In many ways, this should be the case. But the fact that it was consistently the case suggests that our measurements of recognition and recall were indeed indexing how well these brands were encoded, stored, and subsequently retrieved from memory.

One kind of memory for each brand was strongly related to another kind of memory for that same brand and only weakly related (at best) to memory for other brands seen perhaps a minute before or after.

When you're trying to understand this limited-capacity attention and memory system of ours, such data are helpful.

Although this, too, will not make it in the paper, visual inspection of the physiological data (cardiac response curves) suggests that participants had an involuntary reflex associated with sensory intake for the brands the recognized but not as much for those that they did not recognize.

This tidbit is pretty awesome, but it will also not make the final paper due to how we analyze data. Although the most appropriate statistical test backs up the "story" told in the preceding paragraph, the highly specialized nature of that particular test makes it seem as if we are being disingenuous in looking for statistical significance. Thus, it is easier to omit than to justify.

All of this continues my respect and love for the human brain. What an amazing device.

News Story on Our Political Ads Research

The local Fox News affiliate came by the lab on Friday to do a story about an article we have appearing in the December 2007 Journal of Advertising.

The research was done with James R. Angelini, of the University of Delaware, and Sungkyoung Lee, of Indiana University.

You can read a news release about the research at the Texas Tech Web site.

Your Heart Tells What Your Brain Knows

One of the academic groups to which I belong, the Society for Psychophysiological Research, started as the Society for Polygraph Research.

It follows that much of the technologies that we use in the lab have some foundation in lie detection.

An important tenet of lie detection is that your body reacts differently depending upon what you know.

Although media portrayals frequently portray lie detection as catching someone telling an untruth, it is more reliable to use the guilty knowledge test.

In this test, an individual is told various aspects of a crime, for example. Some of the details are untrue, and some of the details are things that only someone who had been at the crime scene would know. Thus, if you respond to the proper location of the murder weapon, it suggests that you saw it in that location.

For the first time, my lab is attempting to correlate physiology and memory. I will avoid the details of the experiment here, but we tested memory following presentation of a media-related stimulus. During the memory test, participants heard sound clips that they previously heard during the experiment, and they heard sound clips that they did not hear.

Their job was to say "Yes" they had heard it during the earlier experiment or "No" they hadn't.

We recorded their physiology while they were listening and for several seconds afterward while the screen was black.

We wanted to compare the physiological results based upon their memory performance. Now, I had no idea how much work this would be. Really, it was an insane data analysis. It took forever. There are now more than 12,000 variables in the heart rate data set alone.

In the end, it was worth it, if only for the "cool" value.

The figure above shows a cardiac response curve (CRC) for trials where participants correctly recognized a sound clip (i.e., hits, shown in blue). The second cardiac response curve is for trials where they correctly failed to recognize a clip (i.e., correct rejections, shown in green).

At first, both CRCs show an initial deceleration at the beginning of the trial. This is an orienting reflex elicited by the onset of the trial. However, for the correct rejections, there is sustained cardiac deceleration. We typically associate this sustained deceleration with continued cognitive effort. As your brain tries harder, your heart slows down. Cool, huh?

This makes sense, and it fits with our (and others') model(s) of memory. In a recognition task, you can stop trying as soon as you find a match. That is, when the recognition prime matches a memory, you can confidently feel that you recognized it. Since these trials were correct recognitions, we can assume that the match occurred relatively quickly.

Conversely, when there is no recognition, the brain has to keep trying for matches until you give up. This takes longer, obviously, and should require more cognitive effort. This is the exact picture that we see.

In each case, after we stopped collecting data (which went on for 2 seconds after this figure), participants used a computer mouse to make their recognition decision. Thus, these physiological data precede the recognition decision.

To early lie detectors, these data must seem trivial. Of course there is a difference. To me, however, it is fascinating that your heart beats differently when you recognize something than when you don't.

Advertisers: Trust Scientists, not Their Toys

A photo illustration of our lab at Texas Tech University.

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Thanks to the many colleagues who pointed out the recent Ad Age article titled, "Hidden Persuasion or Junk Science?"

In the article, Mya Frazier outlines recent techniques by marketing consultants to use the tools of neuroscience and psychophysiology to better understand consumers.

There are a lot of great points in the article, but to me the most important point is about motivation. To dredge up the cliche Watergate-era quotation, "Follow the money."

People such as A.K. Pradeep, founder of Neurofocus, are in business to make money. That's fine. I am all about capitalism. But they are not scientists. The do not follow the facts for the facts' sake. They follow the money. And the money wants a quick solution. And there is no quick solution.

For years, I have been advocating the use of psychophysiological measures. I have attempted to argue against self-report measures. To shorten the case, I have reduced it to, "People lie." This idea is hardly mine alone. It's one that was cultivated in me by a group of like minded scientists.

According to Ad Age, consultants agree with the basic tenet:

"Amid the many vagaries of marketing research, one thing is clear: Consumers lie. About what they want. About what they need. Sometimes they do it purposely. Most often they simply don't seem to realize what they're doing at all. Mr. Pradeep and his peers in the field of neuromarketing say they have the solution."

If people lie, then consultants lie. It logically follows. Trust me.

Although they agree with the basic tenet, they do not agree that it applies to them.

I'm not calling Mr. Pradeep a snake oil salesman. I don't know the man. I have no reason to believe that he's not the most well intentioned consultant ever. But if consumers can lie because "they simply don't seem to realize that they're doing at all," then I see no reason why the same must not be true of marketing consultants, too.

As a scientist, I took entire courses trying to alert me to my biases. I've sat in coffeehouses with colleagues debating the nature of evidence. I really care about how I know what I know.

I know, for example, that it's in my nature to look for evidence that confirms my suspicions. So instead I look for negative evidence, or evidence that shows that I am wrong. This idea dates back hundreds of years and is common to science. It is far less common to industry.

Even looking for negative evidence is not enough. Even then, I am somewhat imprisoned by my own biases. We all are. That's why scientists publish their work in academic journals. To be published in a journal, a piece must be blind peer reviewed by others in the field. That is, our names are stripped off, and similarly trained peers dissect the work. Only then do the ideas see the light of day.

The process has its flaws, sure. But at least our ideas receive some sort of scrutiny. This idea was not lost in the Ad Age article.

"I don't want to trash people doing it, I'm just saying the incentives are such that there's no quality control because none of this data is published in peer-reviewed journals," said Paul J. Zak, the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and a professor of economics at Claremont Graduate University. "I think the payoff is pretty low for marketers."

Here's the threat. I know a good deal about advertising. I also know a good deal about cognitive science. I certainly know more about the latter than the average marketing director. And I know that if you hook people up to any of the devices mentioned in the article, you're going to see differences.

The logic is simple:

1. If you can perceive a difference in two stimuli, then that had to be a psychological event. That is, you psychologically perceived a difference.
2. Psychological events tend to "live" in the brain.
3. Finally, if you know there was a difference in the brain, and you go looking for a difference in the brain (or downstream peripheral nervous system), then you will find one.

And if you know something about advertising, you can interpret that difference in a logically consistent way.

But this is nothing more than a glorified focus group. Finding differences is child's play. The hard work is theorizing about the nature of those differences. That's very hard work. Trust me. And I see no incentive for consultants to do the hard work.

There is every incentive to look for any (likely) spurious correlation between data and sales. But there is much less incentive -- especially in the short-term -- to look for reasons why your relationship with an advertised brand might manifest itself in a particular way.

Allow me to give an example. More than two years ago, my lab set about investigating emotional psychophysiological responses to advertised brands. We were inspired by Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts' ideas about Lovemarks.

We could have taken our show on the road after that initial idea. But we did not. We're scientists. We collected data. We tested some assumptions to try to ensure that we were not just seeing what we wanted to see. Those first data were recently published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Advertising.

Before those ideas saw the light of day, three advertising scholars had to sign off on them. Now more than two years later, we are submitting the second round of data to the American Academy of Advertising for consideration.

It takes time to get it right. It's much easier to play a hunch. And if you have any idea what you are doing, then hunches often sound correct.

Most of the people mentioned in the article are thinking the right kinds of thoughts. They're doing the right kinds of things. They are just not doing them in the right kind of way. They are not giving the facts due diligence. It is this seemingly fast and loose treatment that makes terms such as "junk science" show up in headlines.

How Are You Going to Secure the Transducer?

I've been a bit of a slouch posting lately due to the trip to San Francisco (see pictures on Dr. Rob Potter's Web site).

In the interim, I wanted to relay a funny story.

We are in the process of purchasing some new equipment for the psychophysiology lab. Specifically, we're trying to choose between a couple of new measures that I have never used before.

The impetus behind this is a study idea of Wes Wise, a master's student here at Texas Tech. Since Wes knows the study best, I asked him to call Coulbourn Instruments to see what we needed.

Now, Wes is a top notch master's students, and I would clone him if I could (hello, Dolly), but he is new to the psychophysiology game. And the poor guy was felled by the second question:

"How are you going to secure the transducer?" he was asked.

To listen to him explain it still makes me laugh out loud. He mumbles something about the flux capacitor, vaguely mentions armed guards, and generally panics.

I cannot do Wes's sense of humor justice here, obviously. But he forever has a catch phrase in my mind.

Dr Pepper: Lone Star Lovemark

Most days I quite love my job. I love going to work every day trying to figure out how the brain works. Earlier this week, I was in the lab running an experiment.

One of the experiments we are doing involves having participants look at brand logos. We measure, among other things, activity in the facial muscles associated with smiling and frowning.

Bored as I was to be in the lab yet again, I was staring at the screen watching the anonymous participant's physiological reactions.

When the Dr Pepper logo popped up ... wow! The blue line indicative of activity over the orbicularis oculi muscle group went through the roof. A huge smile. [We're not measuring zygomaticus major activity this time, which I will explain later].

Huge smile!

You see, Dr Pepper hails from Texas. They pretty much love it here. I love it, too. It is a Lovemark of mine. Theirs, too.

And I think that it is too, too cool that when they see the logo they cannot help but smile. Imagine sitting in an overly warm room with a bunch of wires stuck to you. You're there only for extra credit. You just want to get done and get out of there.

But then you see the Dr Pepper logo. And you cannot help but smile.

Too cool.

Trust Your Heart: It Knows What's Real

Six years ago today (give or take), I had a difficult decision to make. I had identified Annie Lang (Indiana U.) and Mike Shapiro (Cornell U.) as the mentors with whom I wanted to work for my Ph.D.

Both places accepted me with funding. What to do? I could not be two places at once.

Initially, I chose Cornell. In many ways, it was a great decision. Dr. Shapiro is a great mentor, and I loved working with him.

I made the decision, in part, because of a paper Mike had written during the 2000-01 academic year. The paper involved perceived reality. That is, how do you know whether something you have never experienced is realistic?

Without going too deep here, this is of interest to media scholars since almost everything on television is somewhat unlike real life. If television were not bigger, brighter, and louder, why not just turn off the TV and live your life?

My work with Dr. Shapiro resulted in one journal publication (read the PDF here), and I still call upon him for advice to this day. However, while at Cornell I realized that I really did need to learn psychophysiological measurement to answer my research questions.

Annie Lang pulled off a miracle and rescued my chancellor's fellowship, and I was on my way to the Hoosier state. She taught, and I learned. And I consider myself very lucky to have worked with both of these great scholars.

Fast forward to 2007, and my lab is running a study that owes its roots to these two thinkers. We are collecting psychophysiological responses to perceived reality scenarios.

The paradigm is basically this (and owes directly to Dr. Shapiro and colleagues): we establish a scenario that might occur on television. For example, we tell people to consider "A family is at home when an earthquake hits."

Then, given that scenario, we ask people to rate how realistic different events are. So we might say, "family waits for earthquake to end." When we have asked people across the country, they say that this is quite likely to happen.

We might also ask them to decide the reality of something very atypical. So we might say, "family stands by glass window." Again, when we ask people across the country, they say this is highly unlikely.

I am developing a neural network-based theory of how events are stored in the brain and how we decide what is real. The current study is the next logical step.

In brief, we are looking at heart rate in terms of cognitive load. In a safe, controlled environment, we know that the heart decelerates (or stays decelerated) when attentional resources are being allocated.

It was my hypothesis that atypical events would require more cognitive load.

This experiment attempts to control almost everything. So the events are presented via audio (to control for reading speed) while participants watch a black screen. For a variety of psychological stimuli, physiological data have been collected for 6 seconds. So I wanted to record data for exactly 6 seconds after the end of the audio event.

It was impossible to have all of the event audio files take the same length, so we record for 11 seconds. In each case, the sound file begins somewhere after the first second and ends at exactly 5 seconds into the recording.


In each case, the screen went black at the beginning of the trial. This leads to an orienting reflex, marked by cardiac deceleration. What is interesting is that the cardiac decelerations persists for atypical events (white circles). However, the heart rate is higher for typical events (black circles).

This suggests that the brain is indeed having to work harder to process these atypical events.

Too cool. It makes for a great start to spring break. Actually, the stomach flu started spring break, but this is a nice recovery.

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For some reason, the Y-axis labels disappeared when I exported this graph. These heart rates range from 78 bpm at the top to 74.5 bpm at the bottom.

Watching Your Own Hand

When building a lab, it's about the little things.

In part due to the worst winter in forever, the lab was empty on Wednesday afternoon. Nonetheless, I was still trying to get things to work. The oscilloscope was my current dilemma.

I'm not an engineer, and the fool thing has approximately 100 settings. So with some settings e-mailed from Indiana (thanks, James), I sat there tinkering with things.

Finally it looked right, but I needed to see some actual EMG activity (i.e., the electrical signals created by muscle fibers contracting).

We usually get this from facial muscles, but it's kind of difficult to put electrodes on one's own face. So I gelled up two electrodes and stuck them on the back of my hand.

Through the bioamplifier and onto the screen of the scope and ... magically ... beautiful little EMG waves appeared on the screen when I squeezed my hand.

If you've never been through the tedium of setting up a lab, you likely cannot appreciate how great this baby step felt.