Papers by Matthew Brook O'Donnell
Autonomy has been described as a fundamental human need and satisfying the need for autonomy is a... more Autonomy has been described as a fundamental human need and satisfying the need for autonomy is an important motivator of behavior (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Autonomy can be supported in various ways, and autonomy-supportive environments are associated with more successful behavior change (Ng et al., 2012). Framing information and decisions in autonomous ways, emphasizing choice and agency, may increase receptivity to health messages and promote behavior change. In this study, we assess the degree to which framing health messages related to COVID-19 in ways that support autonomy improves message effectiveness and promotes social distancing behaviors.
Cerebral Cortex, 2021
Self-reflection and thinking about the thoughts and behaviors of others are important skills for ... more Self-reflection and thinking about the thoughts and behaviors of others are important skills for humans to function in the social world. These two processes overlap in terms of the component processes involved, and share overlapping functional organizations within the human brain, in particular within the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Several functional models have been proposed to explain these two processes, but none has directly explored the extent to which they are distinctly represented within different parts of the brain. This study used multivoxel pattern classification to quantify the separability of self- and other-related thought in the MPFC and expanded this question to the entire brain. Using a large-scale mega-analytic dataset, spanning three separate studies (n = 142), we find that self- and other-related thought can be reliably distinguished above chance within the MPFC, posterior cingulate cortex and temporal lobes. We highlight subcomponents of the ventral MPFC t...
Journal of Health Communication, 2019
Exposure to media content can shape public opinions about tobacco. Accurately describing content ... more Exposure to media content can shape public opinions about tobacco. Accurately describing content is a first step to showing such effects. Historically, content analyses have hand-coded tobacco-focused texts from a few media sources which ignored passing mention coverage and social media sources, and could not reliably capture overtime variation. By using a combination of crowd-sourced and automated coding, we labeled the population of all e-cigarette and other tobacco-related (including cigarettes, hookah, cigars, etc.) 'long-form texts' (focused and passing coverage, in mass media and website articles) and social media items (tweets and YouTube videos) collected May 2014-June 2017 for four tobacco control themes. Automated coding of theme coverage met thresholds for item-level precision and recall, event validation, and weekly-level reliability for most sources, except YouTube. Health, Policy, Addiction and Youth themes were frequent in e-cigarette long-form focused coverage (44%-68%), but not in long-form passing coverage (5%-22%). These themes were less frequent in other tobacco coverage (long-form focused (13-32%) and passing coverage (4-11%)). Themes were infrequent in both e-cigarette (1-3%) and other tobacco tweets (2-4%). Findings demonstrate that passing e-cigarette and other tobacco long-form coverage and social media sources paint different pictures of theme coverage than focused long-form coverage. Automated coding also allowed us to code the amount of data required to estimate reliable weekly theme coverage over three years. E-cigarette theme coverage showed much more week-to-week variation than did other tobacco coverage. Automated coding allows accurate descriptions of theme coverage in passing mentions, social media, and trends in weekly theme coverage.
Cerebral Cortex, 2018
Information that is shared widely can profoundly shape society. Evidence from neuroimaging sugges... more Information that is shared widely can profoundly shape society. Evidence from neuroimaging suggests that activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a core region of the brain’s valuation system tracks with this sharing. However, the mechanisms linking vmPFC responses in individuals to population behavior are still unclear. We used a multilevel brain-as-predictor approach to address this gap, finding that individual differences in how closely vmPFC activity corresponded with population news article sharing related to how closely its activity tracked with social consensus about article value. Moreover, how closely vmPFC activity corresponded with population behavior was linked to daily life news experience: frequent news readers tended to show high vmPFC across all articles, whereas infrequent readers showed high vmPFC only to articles that were more broadly valued and heavily shared. Using functional connectivity analyses, we found that superior tracking of consensus val...
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 2014
We used free association tasks to investigate second language (L2) verb-argument constructions (V... more We used free association tasks to investigate second language (L2) verb-argument constructions (VACs) and the ways in which their access is sensitive to statistical patterns of usage (verb type-token frequency distribution, VAC-verb contingency, verb-VAC semantic prototypicality). 131 German, 131 Spanish, and 131 Czech advanced L2 learners of English generated the first word that came to mind to fill the V slot in 40 sparse VAC frames such as ‘he __ across the …’, ‘it __ of the …’, etc. For each VAC, we compared these results with corpus analyses of verb selection preferences in 100 million words of usage and with the semantic network structure of the verbs in these VACs. For all language groups, multiple regression analyses predicting the frequencies of verb types generated for each VAC show independent contributions of (i) verb frequency in the VAC, (ii) VAC-verb contingency, and (iii) verb prototypicality in terms of centrality within the VAC semantic network. L2 VAC processing i...
English Language and Linguistics, 2011
... vital subject, we have gone beyond the confines of simply bringing together a number of New T... more ... vital subject, we have gone beyond the confines of simply bringing together a number of New Testament or Hebrew Bible scholars to ... and Other Topics in New Testament Linguistics The final essay, by Matthew O'Donnell, builds on previous work re-garding corpus linguistics. ...
Media Psychology, 2019
What differentiates sharing with few, well-defined others (narrowcasting) from sharing with loose... more What differentiates sharing with few, well-defined others (narrowcasting) from sharing with loosely defined crowds (broadcasting)? One possibility involves a trade-off where broadcasting is selffocused and self-serving, and narrowcasting is based on otheroriented, altruistic motives. We present neuroimaging data consistent with a second, parallel-processes perspective. According to this account, both narrow-and broadcasting simultaneously involve self-related and social motives since these concepts are strongly intertwined both on a psychological and neural level. We recorded brain activity within regions that are meta-analytically associated with self-related and social cognition while participants made decisions to narrow-or broadcast New York Times articles on social media. Results show increased involvement of brain regions associated with both self-related and social processing in narrowand broadcasting, compared to a control condition. However, both processes were involved with higher intensity during narrowcasting, compared to broadcasting. These data help to disambiguate a theoretical discussion in communication science and clarify the neuropsychological mechanisms that drive sharing decisions in different contexts. Specifically, we highlight that narrow-and broadcasting afford differing intensities of two psychological processes that are crucial to persuasion and population-level content virality.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2018
In this driving study, participants were assigned to a driverpassenger dyad and performed two dri... more In this driving study, participants were assigned to a driverpassenger dyad and performed two drives along Interstate-95 in normal traffic conditions. During the driving session, the driver had to safely navigate the route while listening and discussing news stories that were relayed by the passenger. The driver then performed a set of memory tasks to evaluate how well they retained information from the discussion in a multitask context. We report preliminary analyses that examined subjective factors which may influence success in social communication, including trait and state similarity derived from questionnaires as well as physiological synchrony from implicit state measurements derived from brain activity data. Although this dataset is still in collection, these initial findings suggest potential metrics that capture the contextual complexity in naturalistic, multitask environments, providing a rich opportunity to study how successful communication reflects shared social and emotional experiences. Keywords: Interstate driving Á Social network structure Á State questionnaires EEG Á Neural synchrony Á Communication Á Individual differences
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2020
What are the key ingredients that make some persuasive messages resonate with audiences and elici... more What are the key ingredients that make some persuasive messages resonate with audiences and elicit action, while others fail? Billions of dollars per year are put towards changing human behavior, but it is difficult to know which messages will be the most persuasive in the field. By combining novel neuroimaging techniques and large-scale online data, we examine the role of key health communication variables relevant to motivating action at scale. We exposed a sample of smokers to anti-smoking web-banner messages from a real-world campaign while measuring message-evoked brain response patterns via fMRI, and we also obtained subjective evaluations of each banner. Neural indices were derived based on: (i) message-evoked activity in specific brain regions; and (ii) spatially distributed response patterns, both selected based on prior research and theoretical considerations. Next, we connected the neural and subjective data with an independent, objective outcome of message success, which is the per-banner click-through rate in the real-world campaign. Results show that messages evoking brain responses more similar to signatures of negative emotion and vividness had lower online click-through-rates. This strategy helps to connect and integrate the rapidly growing body of knowledge about brain function with formative research and outcome evaluation of health campaigns, and could ultimately further disease prevention efforts.
Cognitive Science, 2011
Robust Language Acquisition – an Emergent Consequence of Language as a Complex Adaptive System Ni... more Robust Language Acquisition – an Emergent Consequence of Language as a Complex Adaptive System Nick C. Ellis ([email protected]) Department of Psychology and English Language Institute, University of Michigan 1085 South University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107 USA Matthew Brook O’Donnell ([email protected]) English Language Institute, University of Michigan 1085 South University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107 USA Abstract the examples you have heard. Mandool inherits its interpretation from the echoes of the verbs that occupy this VAC – words like come, walk, move, ..., scud, skitter and flit - in just the same way that you can conjure up an idea of my dog Phoebe, who you have never met either, from the conspiracy of your memories of dogs. Knowledge of language is based on these types of inference, and verbs are the cornerstone of the syntax- semantics interface. To appreciate your idea of Phoebe, we would need a record of your relevant evidence (all of the dogs you have experienced, ...
Using a corpus of newspaper articles divided into two categories based on textual position: TISC ... more Using a corpus of newspaper articles divided into two categories based on textual position: TISC (text-initial sentences) and NTISC (all other sentences), the collocates and local patterns of a text-initial key word, fresh, are analyzed. Patterns of fresh + CONTROVERSY NOUN (row, controversy, blow, embarrassment) are particularly distinctive in first sentences including the elements FACE/SPARK ABOUT TIME AFTER, e.g. faced fresh embarrassment over… yesterday when… Using corpus annotation the extent and variation of this pattern is revealed and related to discourse functions, drawing in particular on White';s (1997) characterisation of hard news articles and the notion of the NUCLEUS to describe text beginnings.
Scientific Reports, 2018
Humans are driven to pursue and preserve social relationships, and these motivations are reinforc... more Humans are driven to pursue and preserve social relationships, and these motivations are reinforced through biological systems. In particular, individual differences in the tuning of biological systems that respond to social threats may motivate individuals to seek out differently structured social environments. Drawing on a sample of adolescent males who underwent fMRI brain imaging (n = 74) and contributed Facebook data, we examined whether biological responses to a common scenariobeing excluded from an activity with peers-was associated with their social network structure. We find that neural responses during social exclusion in a priori hypothesized "social pain" regions of the brain (dACC, AI, subACC) are associated with the density and transitivity of core friendship networks. These findings suggest that neural reactivity to exclusion may be one factor that underlies network "safety". More broadly, the study shows the potential of linking social cognitive tendencies to social structural properties.
The Journal of Neuroscience, 2019
Emotionally evocative messages can be an effective way to change behavior, but the neural pathway... more Emotionally evocative messages can be an effective way to change behavior, but the neural pathways that translate messages into effects on individuals and populations are not fully understood. We used a human functional neuroimaging approach to ask how affect-, value-, and regulation-related brain systems interact to predict effects of graphic anti-smoking messages for individual smokers (both males and females) and within a population-level messaging campaign. Results indicated that increased activity in the amygdala, a region involved in affective reactivity, predicted both personal quit intentions and population-level information-seeking and this was mediated by activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a region involved in computing an integrative value signal. Further, the predictive value of these regions was moderated by expression of a meta-analytically defined brain pattern indexing emotion regulation. That is, amygdala and vmPFC activity strongly tracked with population behavior only when participants showed low recruitment of this brain pattern, which consists of regions involved in goal-driven regulation of affective responses. Overall, these findings suggest that affective and value-related brain responses can predict the success of persuasive messages and that neural mechanisms of emotion regulation can shape these responses, moderating the extent to which they track with population-level message impact.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018
Self-transcendence refers to a shift in mindset from focusing on self-interests to the well-being... more Self-transcendence refers to a shift in mindset from focusing on self-interests to the well-being of others. We offer an integrative neural model of self-transcendence in the context of persuasive messaging by examining the mechanisms of self-transcendence in promoting receptivity to health messages and behavior change. Specifically, we posited that focusing on values and activities that transcend the self can allow people to see that their self-worth is not tied to a specific behavior in question, and in turn become more receptive to subsequent, otherwise threatening health information. To test whether inducing self-transcendent mindsets before message delivery would help overcome defensiveness and increase receptivity, we used two priming tasks, affirmation and compassion, to elicit a transcendent mindset among 220 sedentary adults. As preregistered, those who completed a self-transcendence task before health message exposure, compared with controls, showed greater increases in ob...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018
Self-transcendence refers to a shift in mindset from focusing on self-interests to the well-being... more Self-transcendence refers to a shift in mindset from focusing on self-interests to the well-being of others. We offer an integrative neural model of self-transcendence in the context of persuasive messaging by examining the mechanisms of self-transcendence in promoting receptivity to health messages and behavior change. Specifically, we posited that focusing on values and activities that transcend the self can allow people to see that their self-worth is not tied to a specific behavior in question, and in turn become more receptive to subsequent, otherwise threatening health information. To test whether inducing self-transcendent mindsets before message delivery would help overcome defensiveness and increase receptivity, we used two priming tasks, affirmation and compassion, to elicit a transcendent mindset among 220 sedentary adults. As preregistered, those who completed a self-transcendence task before health message exposure, compared with controls, showed greater increases in ob...
Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, Feb 1, 2018
Individuals react differently to social experiences; for example, people who are more sensitive t... more Individuals react differently to social experiences; for example, people who are more sensitive to negative social experiences, such as being excluded, may be more likely to adapt their behavior to fit in with others. We examined whether functional brain connectivity during social exclusion in the fMRI scanner can be used to predict subsequent conformity to peer norms. Adolescent males (n = 57) completed a two-part study on teen driving risk: a social exclusion task (Cyberball) during an fMRI session and a subsequent driving simulator session in which they drove alone and in the presence of a peer who expressed risk-averse or risk-accepting driving norms. We computed the difference in functional connectivity between social exclusion and social inclusion from each node in the brain to nodes in two brain networks, one previously associated with mentalizing (medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, precuneus, temporal poles) and another with social pain (dorsal anterior cing...
Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, Jan 15, 2018
Worldwide, tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and illness. One common strategy... more Worldwide, tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and illness. One common strategy for reducing the prevalence of cigarette smoking and other health risk behaviors is the use of graphic warning labels (GWLs). This has led to widespread interest from the perspective of health psychology in understanding the mechanisms of GWL effectiveness. Here we investigated differences in how the brain responds to negative, graphic warning label-inspired antismoking ads and neutral control ads, and we probed how this response related to future behavior. A group of smokers (N = 45) viewed GWL-inspired and control antismoking ads while undergoing fMRI, and their smoking behavior was assessed before and one month after the scan. We examined neural coherence between two regions in the brain's valuation network, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and ventral striatum (VS). We found that greater neural coherence in the brain's valuation network during GWL ads (relative to control...
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Papers by Matthew Brook O'Donnell