Your brain knows when torn off before

In the crowded market of modern life, decisions about value and price continue to bombard us, and our brains may make judgments before we become consciously aware of this. Russian researchers have identified a specific neural marker that activates the price of a product almost immediately, and the brain responds to exaggerated prices more strongly than suspicious cheap goods.

The study, published in the field of human neuroscience in January, has a fascinating glimpse into automated mechanisms that influence our buying decisions under the surface of conscious thought.

Scientists at Russian neuromarketing companies HSE University and Neurotrend used advanced brain imaging techniques to track neural responses as participants evaluated the price of the product. Their findings suggest that the brain learns with areas responsible for reward assessment and learning from past decisions with “deviating” prices.

“The results show that the brain responds almost immediately when prices fail to meet expectations. In addition, the response is related to evaluating rewards and brain regions involved in past decisions. This means that the perception of the value of a product is part of an automated cognitive mechanism, which is part of an automated cognitive mechanism to learn.

On a rainy Moscow afternoon in the Neuromarket Lab, participants tied up with sensors and stared at the screen showing familiar technology products. The researchers presented 65 images of participants of mobile phones (Iphone, Nokia and Xiaomi models) with hypothetical prices ranging from suspiciously low to outrageously high compared to actual market value, which is a hypothetical price.

After seeing each phone and its price, participants are displayed to the term “expensive” or “cheap” and it is necessary to determine whether the evaluation matches the displayed price. In the process, the researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) (MEG) to conduct brain activity, a technology that captures the electrical and magnetic activity of neurons in real time.

Key discovery centers around a specific brain signal called the N400, an electrical pulse that is usually generated when the brain encounters unexpected information. When participants see prices significantly different from market value, the N400 signal emits strongly – overpriced prices trigger a stronger response than incredible lows.

This asymmetry has evolutionary significance: being skeptical of overly kind bargaining may protect our ancestors from scams, while being particularly sensitive to overpricing can help avoid wasting valuable resources.

Interestingly, the researchers also found that brand familiarity affects the extent to which our brains judge the appropriate pricing. For Xiaomi phones, the price range that triggers a powerful N400 reply is wider, suggesting that participants have less certainty about the brand’s “real” market value, compared to more established brands such as the iPhone.

The study originated from students’ curiosity. “Back to my bachelor’s degree program at HSE University, I wondered if it’s possible to determine what a person thinks is acceptable from brain activity. Our experiments have confirmed that it’s possible.”

Kislov acknowledges moral considerations but emphasizes its limited scope: “On a global scale, we are working to develop an objective approach to assessing customer preferences. To what extent do we have the right to infringe on a person’s inner world? This is a good question, but in this project we are just aiming to determine the highest price for people, and this approach is uncomfortable, and this approach is not suitable for any threat to pose a threat to the customer.

By analyzing MEG data to map which brain regions are activated in the brain regions encountered non-optimal prices, the researchers identified the involvement of the frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate gyrus – known to play a crucial role in decision-making and reward assessment.

These implications go beyond practical marketing applications in pure neuroscience. Traditional consumer surveys often fail to capture real price perceptions, as respondents may provide social answers rather than revealing their true reactions.

“More and more, marketers say that traditional consumer surveys cannot provide a complete picture because people can’t always explain why a certain price seems too high or too low. People often say what they think they expect from them.”

The collaboration with Neurotrend points to emerging applications in consumer research. “We found that we can check the brain of an individual and determine if the price of a particular product meets their expectations. This approach can help predict that people will perceive their price even before they release a new product to the market.”

With the development of neuromarketing technologies, they provide unprecedented insights to consumer psychology at the most basic level. However, they also raise important questions about the boundaries between scientific understanding and the boundaries of how our brains unconsciously evaluate value.

For consumers browsing increasingly complex markets, knowing that their brains are already working behind the scenes to determine the questionable price may feel comfortable, is this a questionable cheap online deal or an overpriced coffee. The next time you instinctively think it’s “too expensive”, your brain may know it before you.