Friends share brain patterns when making purchase decisions

According to research published in the Journal of Neuroscience, your brain activity may be consistent with your close friends when you are all considering buying the same product. The study reveals how friendship produces similar neural responses that can actually predict what your friends might buy.

Researchers at Shanghai International Research University studied how social ties influence consumer behavior and found that close relationships create measurable synchronization of brain activity in decision-making.

In its statement of importance, the researchers noted: “The current study provides new evidence that social relations within real-world networks exhibit higher behavioral and neurosynchronization and develop dynamically with changes in social network structure.”

Friendship makes our brains more similar to choices

The research team conducted two complementary studies to explore this phenomenon. First, they tracked 175 participants to measure how friendships affect product evaluation. They then used brain imaging with 47 participants to observe neural activity while friends looked at ads together.

The results show that the evaluation of the product by friends is obviously more similar to that of strangers. As time goes by, friendships get closer and this similarity increases, indicating that our buying preferences become more aligned with those of our inner circle.

When examining brain activity, the researchers found that friends showed synchronous neural responses in areas related to the following areas.

• Object perception and visual processing
• Attention and memory formation
• Social judgment and evaluation
• Reward processing and decision making
• Emotional response to the product

Your friend’s brain activity can predict your purchase

Perhaps most fascinating is that researchers can predict a person’s purchase intention by analyzing a friend’s brain activity. Using machine learning models applied to functional connectivity graphs (the pattern of communication between brain regions), the team showed that neural data from a person predicts not only their own consumer choices, but also their close friends’ choices.

The prediction accuracy between friends is significantly higher than between strangers, which emphasizes how our social connections affect our decision-making process.

“Using naturalistic stimulation and longitudinal studies, it can be demonstrated that neural activity not only reflects common cognitive functions, but also predicts, more accurately predicting the purchasing intentions of individuals and their close friends than strangers,” the authors explained.

Dynamic relationships, dynamic neural patterns

An important aspect of the study is its longitudinal nature, which allows scientists to observe how changes in friendship dynamics affect neural and behavioral similarities. As the relationship develops – close or more distant – the degree of neural synchronization changes accordingly.

This study provides valuable insights into how social networks shape our daily decision-making in ways we may not be consciously aware of. Although this study focuses specifically on consumer behavior, these findings suggest that the social impact on understanding human decision-making in various environments is broader.

This work, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation, adds to growing evidence that our brains and behaviors are more closely connected to our social networks, providing a neural basis for friends to often have similar tastes and preferences.

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