From Social Cognition to Consumption: Toward an EEG-Based Approach to Consumer Mentalizing

Frontiers in Psychology, April 24, 2026 – Section: Media Psychology

In an era increasingly defined by social interaction and mediated communication, the psychological underpinnings of consumer decision-making are coming under sharper focus. A recent opinion piece published in Frontiers in Psychology on April 24, 2026, champions the concept of "mentalizing" as a critical, yet largely unexamined, component of consumer behavior. The authors, Chiara Casiraghi, Marco Zito, and Valentina Russo, argue that understanding how consumers infer the mental states of others is crucial for comprehending their responses to marketing stimuli, particularly in social contexts. They propose that electroencephalography (EEG), a non-invasive neuroimaging technique, offers a powerful and accessible tool for measuring this complex cognitive process, paving the way for more nuanced consumer research and marketing strategies.

The article, published in Volume 17 of the journal, highlights a growing disconnect between the sophisticated understanding of basic psychological processes like emotion, attention, and memory in marketing, and the neglect of higher-order social cognitive abilities. Mentalizing, defined as the capacity to perceive and interpret the mental states of oneself and others—their beliefs, intentions, and emotions—is presented as fundamental to navigating social interactions. This ability, researchers contend, is not merely an academic construct but a practical driver of consumer choices, influencing everything from brand perception and product adoption to the impact of social norms and influencer endorsements.

Understanding Mentalizing: A Core Social Cognition Process

At its core, mentalizing allows individuals to look beyond observable actions and infer the underlying psychological drivers. While often used interchangeably with related concepts like Theory of Mind, empathy, and perspective-taking, recent consensus, as cited by Quesque et al. (2024), positions mentalizing as the foundational process of attributing mental states. This distinction is vital for consumer research, as the act of inferring intentions and motivations is intrinsic to how consumers interact with brands and other consumers. The authors emphasize that mentalizing should not be viewed as a static trait but as a dynamic process that emerges within specific consumption contexts.

The relevance of mentalizing extends across a broad spectrum of consumer scenarios. When individuals observe others interacting with products, engaging with advertisements, or following influencers, they are not simply passively processing visual information. Instead, they are often actively inferring the emotional states, goals, and intentions of those individuals. This inferential process, the paper suggests, can foster identification with the observed person and, consequently, lead to more positive attitudes towards the consumed product or brand, and increased acceptance of marketing messages.

This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the digital age, where social media platforms have become fertile ground for mediated consumption. Interactions with influencers, testimonials, and characters in advertisements often elicit mentalizing, even in the absence of physical co-presence. This heightened social awareness is closely intertwined with established psychological principles like social conformity, observational learning (Bandura, 1977), social comparison (Festinger, 1954), and social proof (Powell et al., 2017), all of which rely on an individual’s ability to gauge and respond to the perceived mental states of others.

Emerging research in consumer neuroscience, which applies neuroscientific methods to understand consumer behavior, further corroborates the significance of mentalizing. Studies utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have indicated that advertisements designed to engage the brain’s mentalizing network are associated with greater consumer liking and enhanced message effectiveness (Chan et al., 2023; Scholz et al., 2025). Despite this growing body of evidence, many consumer research streams implicitly touch upon mentalizing-related mechanisms, such as narrative persuasion and identification with characters, without explicitly framing them within this construct. This lack of explicit conceptual integration, the authors argue, has potentially limited a more holistic understanding of the social-cognitive drivers of consumer responses.

The Methodological Challenge: Measuring Mentalizing in Consumption

Accurately assessing mentalizing presents a significant methodological hurdle. It is a multidimensional process, encompassing cognitive and affective elements, influenced by social and physical factors, and operating both implicitly and explicitly. Traditional assessment methods, largely developed within clinical and developmental psychology contexts, such as standardized questionnaires and laboratory-based tasks (Abell et al., 2000; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001), are often not directly generalizable to non-clinical populations or the dynamic environment of consumer behavior. Furthermore, self-report measures, common in many psychological assessments, are susceptible to biases.

While neuroscientific techniques offer a potential solution by providing access to the underlying neural dynamics of mentalizing, they too have limitations. fMRI, for instance, has been instrumental in mapping the neural architecture of mentalizing (Schurz et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2021), but its poor temporal resolution and immobile setup make it ill-suited for capturing the rapid, interactive nature of mentalizing in real-time consumption scenarios. Eye-tracking, a prevalent tool in consumer neuroscience, offers insights into attention but does not directly measure complex social-cognitive processes like mentalizing. Other techniques, such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), while portable and more affordable, suffer from limited spatial resolution. Autonomic measures like galvanic skin response and heart rate can track affective responses but fail to isolate the cognitive and inferential aspects of mentalizing.

Electroencephalography (EEG): A Promising Avenue

Against this backdrop, the authors propose electroencephalography (EEG) as a particularly promising method for measuring consumer mentalizing. EEG’s millisecond-level temporal resolution allows for the precise tracking of mentalizing dynamics as they unfold, offering a real-time perspective on how consumers infer others’ mental states. Its portability, cost-effectiveness, and adaptability to diverse scenarios—from video advertisements and social media interactions to in-store purchase environments—make it a highly practical tool for both academic research and applied market research (McInnes et al., 2022). When combined with ecologically valid experimental paradigms, EEG can provide a robust means of assessing mentalizing and the broader cognitive-emotional processes that shape consumer behavior.

However, the authors are quick to acknowledge EEG’s inherent challenges. Sensitivity to motion artifacts and external noise can complicate its use in realistic settings. Moreover, the interpretation of EEG signals is complex, as they can reflect multiple overlapping neural processes, making it difficult to attribute specific measures solely to mentalizing. For example, theta band activity, which has been implicated in mentalizing, is also associated with memory and cognitive load (Fici et al., 2024). Existing EEG research on mentalizing, while nascent and fragmented, has yielded inconsistent findings regarding specific brainwave patterns, such as the role of theta versus alpha activity, underscoring the need for further rigorous investigation.

Integrating Mentalizing into Consumer Neuroscience: A Proposed Framework

The authors advocate for integrating mentalizing as a core mediating process in consumer behavior models. They posit that mentalizing acts as a crucial link between marketing stimuli containing social cues—such as human interactions in advertisements, brand personifications, testimonials, or influencer content—and the resulting consumer responses. This perspective can be readily integrated into established persuasion frameworks like the Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Heuristic-Systematic Model, which typically focus on cognitive and emotional responses. By incorporating mentalizing, these models can account for an additional social-cognitive layer through which consumers interpret behaviors within consumption contexts. Similarly, communication models such as Narrative Transportation Theory (Green and Brock, 2000), highly relevant to advertising and influencer marketing, can be enhanced by recognizing how mentalizing processes mediate the relationship between narrative exposure and persuasive outcomes.

Practically, the authors suggest that EEG-based paradigms can unlock new avenues for investigating consumer mentalizing. By exposing participants to stimuli designed to elicit mentalizing—such as narrative commercials featuring characters or influencer content—researchers can capture the EEG signatures of these processes. Decision-making paradigms, adapted from fields like behavioral economics (e.g., the Ultimatum Game), could also be employed to assess how consumers infer emotions, intentions, and reciprocity in market-like exchanges. The potential for hyperscanning, which involves simultaneously recording EEG data from two interacting individuals, opens exciting possibilities for studying dyadic social cognition in consumer contexts.

Addressing the methodological challenges, the authors propose a multi-stage approach. First, developing EEG-based measures of mentalizing by adapting established paradigms from psychology and neuroscience, systematically manipulating the degree of mentalizing required, and testing these in controlled laboratory settings. This would involve using high-density EEG systems for improved spatial resolution and employing tasks that range from animated social scenarios to more realistic simulations of inferring mental states. Subsequently, these paradigms should be adapted to consumer-relevant stimuli, ensuring ecological validity while maintaining experimental control.

Crucially, the authors emphasize a multimethod approach. Combining EEG data with behavioral observations and self-report measures is essential for data triangulation and robust interpretation of results, particularly given the challenges in construct validity associated with EEG. This integrated approach would allow researchers to relate EEG findings to observable consumer responses and to validate the derived mentalizing measures. Future research should also explore advanced signal processing techniques, including spectral analysis and functional connectivity measures, to capture the complex coordination between brain regions involved in mentalizing.

Ethical Considerations and Future Directions

The integration of advanced neuroscientific methods like EEG into consumer research also brings forth important ethical considerations. The authors highlight concerns related to psychological privacy, as these techniques aim to delve into individuals’ implicit inferences about others’ intentions and emotions. Furthermore, the application of such insights in marketing raises potential issues of manipulation, particularly if persuasive strategies are designed in ways that exploit these cognitive processes without full transparency to consumers. Therefore, strict adherence to ethical guidelines concerning informed consent, data protection, and transparency is paramount.

In their concluding discussion, Casiraghi, Zito, and Russo reiterate that mentalizing represents a vital, yet underdeveloped, area in consumer behavior research. They call for a concerted effort to bridge the gap between social cognition theory and practical consumer neuroscience applications. By developing standardized, validated EEG measures for mentalizing, researchers can foster methodological robustness, enable comparability across studies, and ultimately enhance the effectiveness of both academic research and marketing practices. EEG, they conclude, should be viewed as a complementary tool, enriching the existing set of consumer neuroscience measures rather than a standalone solution, to achieve a more comprehensive, person-centered understanding of consumer behavior in increasingly social and mediated marketplaces.

The research agenda proposed by these authors, while ambitious, points towards a future where consumer understanding moves beyond basic stimulus-response models to embrace the intricate social and psychological dynamics that truly drive consumer choices. The journey from social cognition to consumption, powered by advanced neuroscientific tools like EEG, promises to unlock deeper insights into the human element of the marketplace.