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The Effect of Culture Mix or Not Conflict Against the Decision Making—A fNIRS Study

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: With increasing globalisation and deepening integration of local cultures, a growing number of product advertisements incorporate diverse, mixed cultural elements, designed to attract consumer attention and enhance purchase interest. However, the underlying mechanisms by which visual stimuli successfully influence consumer purchase behaviour remain poorly understood. In the present study, 300 college students aged 18-22 were recruited and randomly assigned to one of three between-subjects experiments (A, B and C), each comparing a control group (n = 50) with an experimental group (n = 50). The experiment employed a single-exposure paradigm, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to monitor changes in participant haemoglobin in brain cortical areas. Facial expressions and vital signs were simultaneously recorded in parallel. Based on these measurements, visual stimuli with mixed cultural elements collectively influence consumer decision-making through their intensity characteristics, potentially involving cognitive conflict processing and may be associated with enhanced emotional arousal and modulated autonomic nervous activity. These results provide exploratory evidence for the neural correlates underlying visual strategies in cross-cultural marketing and offer new methodological support for brand design and consumer cognition studies.

Source: International Journal of Psychology

DOI: 10.1002/ijop.70253