Decoding Consumer Behavior: A Neuroscientific Exploration of Personality Traits Through EEG Functional Connectivity

Neuromarketing traditionally focuses on aspects such as product selection, brand perception, and advertisement assessment. However, the investigation of consumer-related per-sonality traits has been relatively neglected despite its crucial importance. This study aims to address this gap by examining the influence of personality traits on consumer behavior from a neuroscientific perspective. Leveraging a recently introduced, publicly available neuromarketing dataset, we explore the relationship between brain activity captured via Electroencephalo-graphic (EEG), and consumer profiling, as elicited through questionnaires. Functional connectivity (FC) descriptors are employed to delineate the functional brain structure and organization across different brain regions. To account for the dynamic nature of brain phenomena, FC matrices are computed over time in a subject-independent manner. We propose a novel methodology that employs the leading eigenvector of the FC matrices to extract dominant FC patterns associated with personality traits. Subsequent clustering of these dominant FC patterns reveals key insights. Our findings suggest that this methodological approach has the potential to discern some personality traits solely from EEG activity, paving the way for more robust and sophisticated neuromarketing practices.