What if I could scan your friend’s brain while they watched an advertisement, and use that data to predict with startling accuracy what you will buy?
Not what your friend will buy. What you will buy.
Researchers from Shanghai International Studies University say they think they can do it.
In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists say they’ve demonstrated that close friendships create powerful neural synchronization — to the point that brain scans of one person can actually predict the purchasing behavior of their friends.
The research team, led by Jia Jin, conducted two studies with 222 participants to understand how friendship influences consumer behavior at the neural level.
In the first study, 175 participants evaluated products over time while researchers tracked their real-world social networks. Friends rated products far more similarly than non-friends did. And as friendships grew closer, product evaluations became even more aligned. When friendships weakened, the similarity decreased.
The second study put 47 participants into fMRI brain scanners and showed them advertisements. When friends viewed the same ads, their brains synchronized in specific regions linked to object perception, attention, memory, social judgment, and reward processing.
Their brains were literally firing in sync.
The most interesting findings came when researchers used machine learning to analyze the brain scan data.
A person’s neural activity patterns could predict not only their own purchasing intentions, but also the purchasing intentions of their friends—with greater accuracy than they could predict the behavior of strangers.
Thus, if marketers could scan your brain while you watch an ad, they wouldn’t just learn about you and one friend; they could potentially predict the buying behavior of everyone in your social network.
Of course, friends influence each other’s choices. Your buddy recommends a restaurant, you try it. Your colleague raves about a new gadget, suddenly you’re interested too.
But this research suggests the influence runs much deeper than conscious recommendations–to the point perhaps that friendship shapes the fundamental cognitive processes we use to evaluate choices in the first place.
Also, the research tracked friendships over time. As people became closer friends, their neural patterns became more synchronized. As friendships faded, the synchronization weakened.
That suggests the the neural connection between friends is dynamic, constantly adjusting based on how close the relationship is at any given moment.
The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Imagine a future where companies don’t just target you based on your own browsing history.
They target you based on the neural patterns of people in your social network. Or else, they identify “high-value” consumers not by their purchasing power, but by how influential their neural patterns are across their entire friend network.
We’re not there yet. Brain scanning technology isn’t cheap or scalable for mass consumer research.
But the fundamental insight remains:
We like to think of ourselves as independent decision-makers, carefully weighing options and making rational choices based on our unique preferences.
But our purchasing decisions are possibly far more interconnected with your friends’ decisions than we probably realize.
Somewhere, a marketing executive just got very, very excited. Probably his or her friends, too.