COMPLEX DECISION-MAKING COULD BE FACILITATED BY SOCIAL MODULATION THROUGH REPETITION AND EMOTIONAL PRIMING

TOMAS ALVES SALGUIERO; FRANCO AGUSTIN BERNAL; AXEL BRZOSTOWSKI; AYELÉN CARAMÉS; EMILIO RECART; DAMIAN FURMAN; JUAN MANUEL PEREZ; P. N. FERNÁNDEZ LARROSA

Virtual

Simposio; 9th MindBrainBody Symposium 2022. Max Planck Institute; 2022

Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences

Some decision-making (DM) processes require quick answers, while morecomplex decisions demand greater cognitive engagement. Under the hypothesisthat frequent exposure to a stimulus (repetition priming) or its associationwith an emotional valence (emotional priming) could drive DM, onlineexperiments were conducted. To compare results in a more ecological situation (SocialStudy), online social surveys were conducted during the 2019 ArgentinePresidential Elections, as well as written media news were scraped to assesseach candidate´s mention frequency and sentiment analysis.Cognitive experiments involved a computer task where participants had tochoose a face from 4 options, each of them was associated with differentfrequencies (EXP#1) or with positive, negative, neutral, or mixed sentences(EXP#2).  Two experimental groups were assessed: the 1st group was askedto choose a face without any specification (NST); and the 2nd one for animportant task (IT). Results show: 1. The most repeated face was significantlymore chosen in the NST group, involving significantly greater response time; 2.The faces with a positive association were significantly more chosen thanothers, in both groups; and 3. The effect persisted at least for24hs.  In the case of the Natural Experiment, Familiarity(F), Trust(T), andVoting Probability(VP) were estimated for each candidate from the surveys, aswell as the main means used by the participants to inform themselves about thecandidates. T and F mostly explain the VP variance; in a cross-analysis betweenvariables and for different candidates, T was found to correlate better (thanF) with VP but both were significant in most analyses. Besides, F, T, and VPfor each candidate correlate significantly with the frequency of mentions, thepositive association, and election results.These results support our hypothesis and suggest that complexdecision-making susceptibility to repetition or emotional priming could dependon the relevance of the involved task.