Neural Correlates of Technological Ambivalence:

A Research Proposal Hillol Bala1, Elise Labonte-LeMoyne2, and Pierre-Majorique Léger2

1 Indiana University 2 Tech3Lab, HEC Montreal

Emotions in IS research

Positive:

opportunity, acceptance,

perceived usefulness,

perceived enjoyment

Treated as a binary variable

Negative:threat, resistance, perceived anxiety, technostress

Ambivalence

“The experience of simultaneously positive and negative orientations toward a person, goal, task, idea, and such appears to be quite common…but it is poorly understood” (Ashforth et al., 2014)

Prior IS studies have investigated coping or adaptation behavior

Stein et al. MISQ (2015)

Pinsonneault, A., Beaudry, A. MISQ (2005)

Beaudry, A. MISQ (2010)

Bala, H., Venkatesh, V. Management Science (2015)

Research question

1) What are the neural correlates of ambivalence?

2) How is ambivalence towards technology neurophysiologically

different from only a positive or negative state?

3) Can we tease apart the sequence in which the positive and

negative states occur when ambivalence is present?

Increased activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)ACC: activated during tasks requiring cognitive controlAmbivalence: state of conflict requiring additional processing and control

(Cunningham et al., 2004)

Increased activation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC)PFC: complex cognitive behavior and decision makingAmbivalence: more effortful information processing

(Cunningham et al., 2003; Nohlen et al., 2014)

Negative correlation between ambivalence and activation in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ)

PCC and TPJ: Social brain networkAmbivalence: Reflecting on one’s own attitude in relation to different situations and opinions of relevant others may help individuals to construct a less conflicted attitude

(Nohlen et al., 2014)

Prior ambivalence research in neuroscience

Proposed study design

Task design

• Objective : 45 participants

• EEG

• 150 trials• 50 positive

• 50 negative

• 50 incongruent (to induce ambivalence)

Context/Technology

Question:Do you intend to

use?

+

Feature 1And

Feature 2

Yes No

1000 ms

5 contexts for pretests

Unlimited

30 trials / context

Two features of the email system will be presented.

Your company is planning to replace the currentemail system and install a different email system.

To answer yes, press the green button.

To answer no, press the red button.

According to these features

Do you intend to use this system if it was indeedimplemented in your company?

Will improve your performance

Will be useful to you

and

Green : yes Red : no

Will degrade your effectiveness

Will be hard to learn

and

Green : yes Red : no

Will be complex to use

Will improve your performance

and

Green : yes Red : no

Contexts

Non-work related system/technology

1. You just tried the new version of the operating system (OS) of your smartphone on your friend’s phone (she has the exact same phone).Your company is planning to install a new version of the current operating system in all the office computers including yours.• Do you intend to install this OS on your smartphone? Yes / No

2. You just tried a new smartphone in a showroom.• Do you intend to buy this new smartphone? Yes / No

Contexts

Work-related system/technology

1. Your company is planning to implement a new ERP system that you are expected to use on a daily basis to perform your tasks.

2. Your company is planning to install a new version of the current operating system in all the office computers including yours. The new operating system.

3. Your company is planning to replace the current email system and install a different email system.• Do you intend to use this system if it was indeed implemented in your

company?

EEG setup

64 preamplifiedelectrodes

Acticap by

Brain Vision

Results from pretests3 subjects

EEG Analysis

Traditional ERP

Independent component analysis (ICA)

Dipole fitting

Cluster Analysis of dipoles

Plotting of event-related spectral perturbations

Evoked potential

Positive

Negative

Ambivalence

600-800 ms

Cluster 3

Prefrontalcortex

Components

Average location of components

Ambivalence Negative Positive

Cluster 7

Posteriorcingulate cortex

Components

Average location of components

Ambivalence Negative Positive

Next step45 participants

To be determined

Which context/features are the most interesting?

fNIRS prefrontal cortex?

What is the relationship with the choice?

Can we predict it?

Where should we publish?