Prof. Dr. Emily Falk (Univerity of Pennsylvania)
“Neural predictors of behaviour change: Linking social neuroscience data with health and policy relevant outcomes”
Thursday, April 17, 2014
2:00 pm
Room 406, Thomson House, McGill University (3650 McTavish Street)
ALL ARE WELCOME, FREE ADMISSION
The talk will be streamlined at https://connect.mcgill.ca/r7fmip91a3e/
Emily Falk is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. Prof. Falk employs a variety of methods drawn from communication science, neuroscience and psychology. Her work traverses levels of analysis from individual behavior, to diffusion in group and population level media effects. In particular, Prof. Falk is interested in predicting behavior change following exposure to persuasive messages and in understanding what makes successful ideas spread (e.g. through social networks, through cultures). Prof. Falk is also interested in the development of “neural focus groups” to predict the efficacy of persuasive communication at the population level. At present, much of her research focuses on health communication, including recent work exploring neural predictors of increased sunscreen use, neural predictors of smoking reduction, and linking neural responses to health messages to population level behavioral outcomes; other areas of interest include political communication, cross-cultural communication, and the spread of culture, social norms and sticky ideas
Abstract: How does social influence get under the skin? Do our brains know us better than we know ourselves? In this talk, Falk will present recent work leveraging neural activity in brain systems linked to self-related processing and value to predict real-world, health-relevant behavior change. She will present data predicting individual changes in health behaviors across time, as well as population level responses to different groups of advertisements and campaigns. She will discuss ways in which neural data complement and extend what we learn from self-reports and how connecting neural data with real world outcomes can help deepen understanding of psychological mechanisms and aid in more efficient design and selection of interventions.
This series is sponsored by the inter-University Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship Which is funded by the Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Societé et al Culture (FQRSC).
(before attuning the talk online, it is advisable to run the connection test at: https://connect.mcgill.ca/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm)