P1-55. Late positive potentials associated with the attractiveness of the appearances of commercial goods

Abstract

Commercial goods with attractive appearances capture consumers’ attention and interest. In order to find an objective measure that could supplement subjective ratings of impressions, this study examined how event-related brain potentials (ERPs) correlated with the attractive appearances of objects. Eighteen university students viewed 150 color photographs of everyday objects, such as toys and tools, for a stimulus duration of 1500 ms. After viewing each stimulus, the participants rated its attractiveness using a visual analog scale. Electroencephalograms were recorded at 38 scalp sites. Based on each participant’s ratings, the 150 pictures were sorted into three categories: high, middle, and low attractiveness. ERPs were computed by averaging the epoch starting 200 ms before and ending 1500 ms after stimulus onset. A temporal principal component analysis revealed that stimuli with higher attractiveness ratings elicited a larger late positive potential (LPP) that was dominant at frontocentral scalp sites in the latency range of 500–1500 ms. Previous studies have shown that the LPP is related to sustained attentional processing of affective stimuli. This study suggests that, combined with subjective ratings, the LPP can be used as an objective measure of the attractiveness of the appearances of visual objects.