Mentor(s): Zackary Hill, M.A., and Keith Tuma, Ph.D.

We’ve come a long way from guessing how people feel when they see an ad. Today, affective responses can be tracked with real science. The PANAS scale (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) helps researchers pin down exactly how people feel before and after viewing content, offering reliable self-reported data on emotional states (Watson et al., 1988). However, people may give flawed remarks when explaining how they truly feel about an ad. That's why we moved to Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), which dives even deeper, lighting up the brain to show which regions respond to emotional and branded stimuli, often before people are consciously aware of their preferences (Knutson et al., 2007). This gives a quick and easy answer for advertisers to see if their content is eliciting the proper neurological reaction. The problem with fMRI is that there is not much room for nuance, and it may not correlate with conscious emotions. So we developed one step further: Facial recognition tech. This picks up on micro-expressions to predict emotional responses in real time (Kulke et al., 2020). Even heart rate and skin conductance are being measured as part of psychophysiological tracking, showing arousal levels when viewers watch emotionally charged ads. Whether it’s a dopamine surge or a subtle smile, we’ve got the tools to measure it.

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