6/28/2015 Future of Decision Neuroscience: What are key questions? Akshay R. Rao, General Mills Chair in Marketing, Director, Institute for Research in Marketing, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

6/28/2015 Questions of interest (to me) Mood, emotion, bias Cross-cultural issues Political choice, policy implications Bias correction [Cranial architecture, numerical cognition, brain/mind models, blood chemistry and decision making…]

6/28/2015 Mood, emotion, bias A tale of several papers Kim and Rao (2009) Kim, Rao and Lee (2009) Matching temporal construal and information content leads to perceptions of “fluency” which then leads to enhanced evaluations ( of political candidates) for uninformed and uninvolved Ss

6/28/2015 Mood, emotion, bias Shen and Rao (2009) Prime a motor procedure Subsequently, invoke the same motor procedure, and the experienced “fluency” yields enhanced evaluations in a concurrent task (product evaluations) Modality specific “feels right”

6/28/2015 Mood, emotion, bias This fluency induced bias disappears when subjects are asked to attend to the potential source of the bias So, what is going on in the brains of subjects who display this bias? Spreading activation? (We should see reward center activation and spreading – basal ganglia, left rostral dlPFC) “HDIF” – mood as information suggests greater interplay of emotion and cognition (amygdala and PFC; ventro-medial sub-regions of the PFC?)

6/28/2015 Cross-culture Priming a cultural orientation in bi-cultural subjects has predictable effects Chen, Ng and Rao (2005) – impatience, WTP varies Kim, Ng and Rao (2009) – regret and brand switching varies due to norm violation Action/inaction Agency (group versus individual)

6/28/2015 Cross-culture What accounts for these (and a host of other) effects? (If I am listening to Indian classical music I drive slower, if I’m listening to David Byrne I drive faster) Some sort of spreading activation? Some sort of “cultural emotion” as information? Where is this located in the brain and how does it work for monoculturals vs. biculturals?

6/28/2015 Political choice, policy Trade-off effect related /biases Hedgcock and Rao (2009); Hedgcock, Chen and Rao (2009) But, how to account for “flat earthers”? “Don’t let the government touch my Medicare…” “I want my America back…” “Global warming is a hoax”

6/28/2015 Policy “…about 98% of the federal financing for climate change research goes to the physical sciences…” NYT The development of new technologies and processes relative to understanding how consumers will or can be influenced to adopt these new technologies, is being funded roughly 49 to 1 We need a public-private partnership to address these pressing social issues through a marketing lens. Neuro methods will play an important role