Month: November 2016

The Physiology of Consumer Buying Habits

On “Black Friday” in the US, shoppers will come out in search of great deals, and researchers can measure the many physiological factors that motivate shoppers other than deals and price cuts.

Black Friday is one of the most exciting days for consumers in the United States. With the holidays right around the corner, significant deals and price cuts incentivize people to do bulk gift shopping. But is price the only factor influencing shoppers to dedicate hours waiting in line for a product?

In a neurophysiology study by Alexander et al., researchers found that participants who received a coupon while shopping online had a significant increase in oxytocin and a decrease in cortisol. A BIOPAC research system was used to gather ECG, respiration, and skin conductance data while the participants browsed a commerce website.

Another article by Ha-Brookshire and Bhaduri measured ECG response to stimuli that tested consumers’ perceived trust of businesses. The BIOPAC MP36R was used to record participants’ heart rates while they read negative reviews of an apparel business. The results found lower heart rate and less trust were correlated with the less favorable comments.

Conversely, a consumer research study by Langner et al. found that consumers’ love of brands is similar to their love of friends. Signals measured included EDA, EMG, ECG, and BPV, and were recorded by BIOPAC MP160/MP150 hardware to measure arousal levels while participants viewed different brand and interpersonal stimuli.

BIOPAC offers a variety of equipment that can be used in studies similar to the ones presented. To find more information on solutions for recording and analyzing signals such as EEG, EMG, respiration, skin conductance using the MP160/MP150, MP36, and other platforms, you can visit the individual application pages on the BIOPAC website. If you are interested in reading other related studies, visit the publications page on the BIOPAC website.

BIOPAC Systems, Inc. provides life science researchers and educators with data acquisition and analysis systems that inspire people and enable greater discovery about life. Visit us at www.biopac.com.

The Physiology of Election Decision-Making

The psychophysiological factors of stress, the behaviors of others, and of introception can play major roles in decision-making, and BIOPAC systems provide measurements of how physiological factors such as these influence decisions.

People experienced varying stress levels because of the 2016 US presidential election. There are a variety of factors that can impact voting behaviors and decision-making. Several recent studies using BIOPAC systems investigated the psychophysiological effects of stress, the behaviors of others, and introception on decision-making.

Stress has been shown to be very influential in decision-making. In their study, Yamakawa, Ohira, and Mastunga Isowa (2016) investigated effects of acute stress and risk taking in decision-making. Participants were asked to perform a decision-making choice where they either kept or bet the money they were given. Cardiodynamic activity was measured with ECG using a BIOPAC MP system. Results suggest that with an increase in cortisol, adrenaline, heart rate, and subjective stress, participants were likely to make fewer risky choices. So, high levels of stress may be key in helping make better decisions when selecting a future president.

Perhaps it’s not stress that will influence the choice of the next POTUS (President of the United States), but rather the behaviors of others. Work by Bault, Joffily, Rustichini, and Coricelli (2011) sought to compare private and social decision-making to discover the effect of social comparison on risky choices. The objective of the study was to understand more about how individuals evaluated the outcomes of their decisions in private as opposed to in a social context. Combining data from functional MRI (FMRI) and skin conductance recordings, subjects’ reactions were measured using a BIOPAC MP150 System. Researchers found that participants took significantly longer to make a decision in a social setting than in a private one.

In the end, many feel that it is important to listen to your heart when deciding who you find qualified to be the next president. A study by Dunn et al. (2010) examined whether introception moderates the coupling of bodily responses to emotional experience and intuitive decision-making. Bodily response and heart rate were recorded using a BIOPAC Research System and electrodes to measure introception through changes in heart rate. Researchers found that introception was not related to arousal, valence ratings, or heart rate response to images.

For more information on BIOPAC’s wide range of tools for recording, displaying, and analyzing physiological measurements from human and animal subjects including respiration, heart rate variability, ECG and EDA, visit BIOPAC’s  psychophysiology page and view BIOPAC’s full line of electrodes, amplifiers, and wearable, wireless transmitters and loggers.

BIOPAC Systems, Inc. provides life science researchers and educators with data acquisition and analysis systems that inspire people and enable greater discovery about life. Visit us at www.biopac.com.

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