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A Meta-Analytic Approach for Uncovering Neural Activation Patterns of Sustainable Product Preference Decisions

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Design Computing and Cognition '16

Abstract

This paper explores the use of neuroimaging data to inform results from a preference decision study involving product sustainability. Neurosynth, a meta-analytic database of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, was used to extract regions of interest (ROIs) for cross comparison with an empirically collected fMRI dataset. The tasks for the empirically collected fMRI dataset were product preference decisions involving sustainability. In particular, participants were engaged in preference judgments separated into two conditions; one with and one without calculated environmental impact values displayed alongside each design alternative. Extracted meta-analytic ROIs were generated based upon keywords (moral, emotion, etc.) from hypotheses on the ways individuals formulate opinions regarding the environment. Furthermore, additional keywords were seeded based on the results of a whole-brain fMRI analysis. Results indicate the important role of moral reasoning and theory of mind processing in product evaluations within social choice domains, such as sustainability.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the staff at the Carnegie Mellon University Scientific Imaging and Brain Research Center for their support during fMRI data acquisition. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant DGE125252 and the National Science Foundation under Grant CMMI1233864.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

    Kosa Goucher-Lambert & Jonathan Cagan

  2. Mississippi State University, Mississippi, USA

    Jarrod Moss

Authors
  1. Kosa Goucher-Lambert
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  2. Jarrod Moss
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  3. Jonathan Cagan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Cagan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and School of Architecture, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

    John. S Gero

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Goucher-Lambert, K., Moss, J., Cagan, J. (2017). A Meta-Analytic Approach for Uncovering Neural Activation Patterns of Sustainable Product Preference Decisions. In: Gero, J. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition '16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44989-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44989-0_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44988-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44989-0

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