From social cognition to consumption: toward an EEG-based approach to consumer mentalizing
April 2026
Introduction
Social cognition encompasses the mental processes that enable individuals to perceive and understand the mental states, emotions, and behaviors of themselves and others, allowing for appropriate social interactions (Blume et al., 2015). Among the various social cognition components, mentalizing refers to those higher-order cognitive abilities to infer one's own and others' mental states, being one of the most comprehensive and fundamental social cognition processes (Quesque et al., 2024). Since it underlies everyday social interactions, mentalizing plays a central role across all contexts involving social components. It is also highly relevant in consumer behavior, where many decisions are shaped by social cognition mechanisms, from product/brand identification, reputation, to imitation, social norms, and influencer dynamics. While marketing research has progressively shifted toward the consumers and the factors shaping their behavior, it still focuses on basic processes such as emotion, attention, or memory, neglecting more complex mechanisms such as mentalizing. In this opinion paper, we discuss the importance of mentalizing to better assess consumer behavior, particularly in social contexts, and propose that neuroscientific methods, especially electroencephalography (EEG), can provide effective tools for measuring this complex yet fundamental process.
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