Ключарёв Василий Андреевич

ERP Correlates of Semantic Inconsistencies in Deepfakes

2026 · ARTICLE · en

Развитие технологий дипфейков вызывает опасения относительно распространения дезинформации. Новейшие технологии создания дипфейков делают всё более сложным различение реального и поддельного медиаконтента. В текущем исследовании изучалось, как достоверность источника, личностные черты и внутренние установки участников могут влиять на мозговую обработку аудиодипфейков, содержащих аргументы за и против вакцинации от COVID-19. Мы проанализировали электроэнцефалограммы (ЭЭГ) 61 участника, поддерживающего или выступающего против вакцинации от COVID-19. Участникам предъявлялись аудиодипфейки с двумя спикерами — известным врачом (сторонником вакцинации) или известным COVID-диссидентом (противником вакцинации), — произносящими высказывания, конгруэнтные или неконгруэнтные их публично известным позициям. Критические слова, противоречащие публичному мнению врача (сторонника вакцинации), вызывали более выраженный отсроченный N400-подобный ответ с латентностью 500–750 мс по сравнению с критическими словами, соответствующими его публичной позиции. Аналогичного эффекта для критических слов популярной актрисы (противницы вакцинации) обнаружено не было. Достоверность спикера значимо предсказывалась амплитудой компонента N400 на критические слова, противоречащие публичной позиции спикеров, тогда как намерения участников делиться дипфейками предсказывались их нейронными ответами на критические слова, соответствующие публичной позиции спикеров. Наши результаты не только подтверждают предшествующие поведенческие данные о том, что информация обрабатывается по-разному в зависимости от достоверности источника, но и связывают их с мозговыми механизмами семантической обработки дипфейков.

Assessing the roles of subjective value and valence in outcome evaluation for consumer products: evidence from behavioral and electrophysiological experiments

2026 · ARTICLE · en

Value-based decision-making is ubiquitous in our daily lives, yet most EEG studies focus on monetary outcomes, with limited attention to how the brain encodes the subjective value and valence of consumer products during outcome evaluation. To address these questions, we set up a novel three-stage task to investigate the behavioral regularities of recall of valence for food products with varying subjective values and their underlying electrophysiological mechanisms for subjective valuation and valence differentiation. With respect to the event-related potential results, we found that not receiving the food products (No-Gain) led to an increase in the FRN. Regarding the P300, we found that both higher subjective values and positive feedback elicited greater deflection of P300 at the outcome stage. Intriguingly, further single-trial analysis of EEG demonstrated that the magnitude of P300, rather than the FRN at the outcome stage, could predict subsequent behavioral performance as represented by memory accuracy. Therefore, these findings highlight the vital and dissociated roles of FRN and P300 in the subjective valuation of consumer products and suggest the possible role of P300 as a biomarker to predict subsequent choice behavior.

Decision for self and other modulates risk attitude and electrophysiological processing: evidence from a behavioral and electrophysiological experiment

2026 · ARTICLE · en

Understanding how people make risky decisions for others compared to themselves is central to decision neuroscience. However, the cognitive and neural underpinnings of such self–other shifts in risk preference—and the mechanisms driving individual differences—remain unclear. To address this, we employed a mixed gambling task with feedback in which participants made risky decisions for themselves and for others while electroencephalography was recorded. Although individuals generally exhibited similar patterns across agents, decisions made for others were associated with a higher degree of risk-taking compared to those made for oneself. In terms of individual heterogeneity, predispositions and decision weights derived from the drift-diffusion model accounted for individual differences and agent-specific shifts in risk preferences. The event-related potential (ERP) component P300 was significantly modulated by the agent, valence, and risk attitude. Critically, risk-averse individuals showed larger P300 deflections and greater amplitude differences between the self and other conditions, whereas risk-seeking individuals exhibited smaller and more uniform P300 responses across agents. Together, these findings highlight both shared and distinct behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying risky decision-making for self and others and underscore the potential of ERP components as neural markers of decision-making under risk in social contexts.

Neural correlates of the non-optimal price: an MEG/EEG study

2025 · ARTICLE · en

Introduction: Setting the right price is crucial for e􀀀ectively positioning products in the market. Conversely, setting a “non-optimal price”—one that is perceived as much lower or higher than the product’s true market value—can negatively influence consumer decisions and business results. Methods: We conducted two electroencephalography (EEG) studies and one magnetoencephalography (MEG) study to investigate brain mechanisms underlying the perception of prices during a price judgment task. In each trial, participants were exposed to a mobile phone image (iPhone, Nokia, or Xiaomi) followed by a price, and instructed to judge whether the price was high or low based on a target word (“cheap” or “expensive”). Results: In both EEG experiments, we found a strong N400-like response to the incongruent target words following prices that substantially di􀀀ered fromthe real market value of themobile phone. The MEG experiment extended these findings by localizing the brain source of the price-related, M400-like response, the magnetic counterpart to the N400 component, in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) implicated in value-based and reward-based learning, respectively. Our results demonstrate that both the brain sources and the timing of the price-related M400 response di􀀀ered from those of the standard M400 evoked by semantically incongruent words. Discussion: Overall, our results suggest that the N400-like response can serve as a neural marker of price-product incongruity, with potential applications in consumer research.

Validation of the Russian Version of the Realistic Moral Vignettes for Studies of Moral Judgments

2025 · ARTICLE · en

Moral judgments and behavior are shaped by individual experiences and cultural environments. In two online studies, we used a standard set of moral vignettes to examine the generalizability of factor structure of moral judgments originally identified in American samples (Knutson et al., 2010; Kruepke et al., 2018) by testing two independent samples of the Russian population (Study 1, N = 247; Study 2, N = 223). In Study 1, the exploratory factor analysis revealed three components that accounted for most of the variance: norm violation, social affect, and intention. In Study 2, the factor structure of the identified moral components was validated by confirmatory factor analysis. Latent profile analysis revealed five distinct profiles of moral scenarios: Peccadillo, Illegal-Antisocial, Controversial Act, Prosocial, and a novel profile specific to our Russian samples—Social Conflict—as compared to the previous study of the American population. These findings suggest fundamental similarities in moral judgment processes across cultures while also highlighting culture-specific patterns in moral scenario categorization. This study also provides researchers with a battery of the real‐life experience‐derived vignettes that can be used in cross-cultural studies of moral judgment.

Uncertainty Reduction Through Affective and Cognitive Media Manipulations: An Eye-Tracking Pilot Study Across NFC Profile

2025 · CHAPTER · en

В данном исследовании изучается влияние манипулятивного контента на снижение неопределённости с учётом индивидуальных различий в потребности в познании (Need for Cognition, NFC). Для оценки реакций на когнитивные, аффективные и нейтральные стимулы использовались поведенческие (прекращение чтения) и физиологические (айтрекинг) показатели. Результаты свидетельствуют о том, что когнитивные манипуляции увеличивают время чтения, а когнитивные и аффективные манипуляции вызывают больше фиксаций и саккад по сравнению с нейтральным контентом. При этом длительность фиксаций, частота морганий и скорость саккад значимо не различались между условиями. Корреляции между NFC и показателями айтрекинга оказались незначимыми, что указывает на то, что манипулятивный контент влияет на динамику снижения неопределённости независимо от уровня потребности в познании.

Time-Frequency Representations in response to true and fake news: Pilot study

2025 · CHAPTER · en

Neurophysiological study of consumer emotional reactions in a simulated multisensory retail environment

2025 · ARTICLE · en

SD analysis identified cross-modal associations between sensory stimuli and retail zones, allowing refinement of semantic positioning. VR experiments revealed that HRV significantly increased in pleasant environments, indicating enhanced parasympathetic activation. HR and EDA showed no significant correlation with emotional valence, though both displayed trends toward reduction in pleasant conditions.

Opposing effects of sugar-free claims on perceived healthiness and sweetness reduce consumers’ willingness to pay for sugar-free products

2025 · ARTICLE · en

The results suggest that, controlling for familiarity with the product, sugar-free labels significantly increased the willingness to pay due to the perception of sugar-free products as healthier than sugar-containing ones. However, this positive effect was overridden by a significant decrease in perceived tastiness and sweetness of products labeled as sugar-free compared to sugar-containing ones, which in turn led to a reduction in the willingness to pay. The overall effect of the label on the willingness to pay was, thus, insignificant. Additionally, we show that the effect of the label on perceived tastiness was fully mediated by perceived sweetness. Conclusion: The opposing effects of the label on subjective product perceptions may be limiting the efficiency of sugar-free claims in changing consumer choices towards healthier food options.

Peers Are as Persuasive as Experts in Reducing Willingness to Pay for Sugary Foods

2025 · ARTICLE · en

Non-communicable diseases are influenced by multiple genetic, physiological, environmental, and behavioral factors, with dietary sugar consumption representing one of the key modifiable risk determinants. Interventions aimed at reducing sugar intake often rely on persuasive health messaging by experts, yet it remains unclear whether the expertise of the narrator of the message is an indispensable component of a persuasive healthy eating call. To address this question, the present study directly compares the effect of different types of social endorsers on willingness to pay (WTP) for sugary food, including experts and peer endorsers. Eighty-eight healthy participants were randomly assigned to three groups: expert (N = 30), peer (N = 29), and multiple peers (N = 29). They evaluated their WTP for sugar-containing, sugar-free, and non-edible products before and after exposure to audio healthy eating interventions delivered by either a nutrition expert or university student peer(s). All audio interventions significantly decreased participants' WTP for sugar-containing products compared to sugar-free products. No significant differences were found between the effectiveness of peer and expert persuasion in reducing WTP for sugar-containing products. Peer-delivered healthy eating calls can be as effective as expert-delivered interventions in decreasing WTP for sugar-containing products. These findings highlight the potential of peer social influence in public health interventions in addition to expert calls.