Myriam Martínez-Fiestas

A Psychophysiological Approach For Measuring Response to Messaging

ABSTRACT How does the consumer emotionally process and react to messaging intended to prompt responsible behavior toward the environment? This study provided a psychophysiological method to analyze how certain combinations of elements in an advertisement generate different types of response. Psychophysiology is the study of the relationship between the mind and the body. Specifically, the authors investigated whether a message could activate the consumers defensive motivational system (resulting in inaction) or the appetitive motivational system (inspiring positive physical action). The findings offer evidence as to what type of message is better at provoking emotion so as to increase the potential of such campaigns to elicit positive changes in behavior.

Detecting salient themes in financial marketing research from 1961 to 2010

The present paper analyses research in the social science subfield of financial marketing research (FMR). We apply a bibliometric approach, using co-word analysis combined with performance analysis and science mapping, to detect and visualise conceptual subdomains and identify the most prominent themes. The thematic networks extracted show the associations between the main concepts treated by the FMR community, thus allowing us to examine its intellectual structure over the last 50 years (1961–2010). The findings are combined with the trends identified through a review of the corpus of manuscripts analysed and a temporal analysis. This longitudinal approach provides a snapshot of the thematic evolution of financial services research and predicts where such research could lead.

Neural effects of environmental advertising: An fMRI analysis of voice age and temporal framing

Ecological information offered to society through advertising enhances awareness of environmental issues, encourages development of sustainable attitudes and intentions, and can even alter behavior. This paper, by means of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and self-reports, explores the underlying mechanisms of processing ecological messages. The study specifically examines brain and behavioral responses to persuasive ecological messages that differ in temporal framing and in the age of the voice pronouncing them. The findings reveal that attitudes are more positive toward future-framed messages presented by young voices. The whole-brain analysis reveals that future-framed (FF) ecological messages trigger activation in brain areas related to imagery, prospective memories and episodic events, thus reflecting the involvement of past behaviors in future ecological actions. Past-framed messages (PF), in turn, elicit brain activations within the episodic system. Young voices (YV), in addition to triggering stronger activation in areas involved with the processing of high-timbre, high-pitched and high-intensity voices, are perceived as more emotional and motivational than old voices (OV) as activations in anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala. Messages expressed by older voices, in turn, exhibit stronger activation in areas formerly linked to low-pitched voices and voice gender perception. Interestingly, a link is identified between neural and self-report responses indicating that certain brain activations in response to future-framed messages and young voices predicted higher attitudes toward future-framed and young voice advertisements, respectively. The results of this study provide invaluable insight into the unconscious origin of attitudes toward environmental messages and indicate which voice and temporal frame of a message generate the greatest subconscious value.

An Exploratory Analysis of Perceived Risk among Construction Workers in Three Spanish-Speaking Countries

AbstractConstruction is one of the most hazardous industries. This study analyzes occupational risk and focuses specifically on the question of perception of risk based on a sample of construction workers from three countries (Spain, Peru, and Nicaragua) that, in spite of sharing the same language (Spanish), have different socioeconomic levels. The model used for this study is based on the psychometric paradigm. The results of the survey using a questionnaire indicate that the sample population can be separated into two different clusters, each characterized either by a high or a low perception of risk. The authors then attempted to establish a link between the level of perceived risk and different socio-demographic variables. The outcome is that only the training variable significantly altered the perception of risk. This finding, as well as various other aspects of risk perception from the different nations, are discussed. The conclusions of this study provide interesting guidelines for risk management ...