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Earlier research indicated that ambient persuasive lighting can have persuasive effects on energy-efficiency behavior. However, why would this kind of ambient feedback be effective? The current research investigated the influence of the strength of associations (of colors used for giving feedback) on the effectiveness of ambient feedback. Two color sets were chosen from a pre-test to represent strongly- and weakly-associated with energy consumption, i.e. red versus green and yellow vs. purple, respectively. Results indicated that lighting feedback that was strongly associated with energy consumption had stronger persuasive effects than weakly-associated lighting feedback. Moreover, participants who received weakly-associated feedback needed more time to program the thermostat when performing the additional cognitive task (as compared to participants without additional task), while this difference was not found in strongly-associated feedback condition. This research reveals that the persuasive potential of ambient persuasive lighting can be enhanced by making use of pre-existing color associations

Recent disasters during major events have resulted in increased focus on influencing crowds, both during emergencies and under normal circumstances. In this exploratory study event experts were interviewed to uncover good practices regarding the use of technology to communicate with crowds. They agree that, rather than using directive means and force, crowds can best be persuaded; proving relevant information enables them to decide for themselves what course of action to take. Some of the experts remain critical about use of social media at events; effectiveness depends on target group composition, visitors' engagement in the event, and reliability. Additionally, the abundance of information visitors have at their fingertips may reduce effectiveness of information emitted by organisers. Especially important in communicating with crowds is "communicating as one", not only pertaining to explicit messages but also to non-verbal communication. Based on these results, implications for event safety are discussed.

Persuasive agents may function as a tool to induce changes in human behavior. Research has shown that human-likeness of such agents influences their effectiveness. Besides characteristics of the agent, other characteristics may also have strong influences on persuasive agents’ effectiveness. One such characteristic is social exclusion. When people feel socially excluded, they are more sensitive to social influence. In two studies, we investigated this effect in a human-agent interaction. Results show stronger behavior changes for socially exclusion compared to social inclusion. This effect seems stronger for females than for males.

A complete and updated state of the art in an area rapidly changing. The various chapters unfold in a way that leads the reader through the main hot spots of the matter: what are the strategies that enable people to interact with machines, how the information should be presented and how it is processed by the cognitive system of user, how to design and evaluate the interface of interactive systems to user experience is smooth, pleasant and satisfying, like the machines can reinforce and increase the capacity of our body and of our cognitive system, what are the issues the production, dissemination and use of products and solutions that can make the technological development, both for individuals and for society and the environment.

If we want future products and services to be designed for a specific target group, we need to assess the latent needs of this target group. Assessing these needs can be done using generative research techniques. This paper describes the development of the digital workbook, a digital tool to be used in the sensitizing stage of a contextmapping study, a methodology for generative research. Evaluation of the digital workbook shows the great potential of using the possibilities of web 2.0 to create digital research tools which combine the size and low costs of online surveys with the richness of data provided by generative research methods. Copyright 2007 ACM.

INTRODUCTION Human societies show the highest levels of complexity and social relationships. During evolution, humans have developed neuronal circuits dedicated to mental abilities that are fundamental to tie social bonds, such as to engage altruistic behaviors that go beyond relatedness and genetic similarities (Boyd 2006). Despite the importance of this social phenomenon, many questions are greatly unsolved (Lieberman 2012, Singer 2012). Here, we aimed at extending the knowledge about the neurophysiology of prosocial decision making, by combining Virtual Reality (VR) with Independent Component Analysis (ICA) of fMRI data. This approach was tailored to avoid two main shortcomings in social neuroscience: on one hand, we provided a contextually rich environment, closer to real-world conditions than classical experimental paradigms (Bohil et al. 2011); on the other hand, we decoded brain activity during a flowing experience, when no a priori models of signal changes were available (Spiers and Maguire 2007, Beckmann 2012). METHODS The behavior of 43 young adults (age 21-30 years; 30 females) during a life-threatening situation was evaluated in a virtual environment, in which the participants had to evacuate a building on fire, in the attempt to save their lives. Toward the end, without being previously informed, participants encountered a trapped virtual human that asked for help. Thus, participants were faced with the dilemma of helping it or not, at the possible cost of their own life (Figure 1). Functional data acquired during the task were preprocessed with SPM8 and the GIFT toolbox (Calhoun et al. 2001) was used to decompose the datasets into sets of independent components (ICs). Statistical tests were carried on IC maps to identify commonalities and differences at a group level. Indeed, participants could be classified in 3 groups considering their behaviors: those who successfully helped the virtual human (SH Group, n=16), who ignored it (NoH group, n=19) or who started helping it, without succeeding (UnSH group, n=8). RESULTS Group ICA revealed several functional brain networks, similar to those previously reported in the literature during both resting state and active tasks (Smith et al. 2009, Bressler and Menon 2010, Arbabshirani et al. 2012). These networks are related both to the processing of sensory features of stimuli and to high-order cognitive functions. Interestingly, two networks showed significant differences between the participants who succeeded in acting prosocially and those who did not (Figure 2). In particular, weaker functional connections were observed between anterior insula (AI) and anterior mid cingulate cortex (aMCC) in the group of participants who acted prosocially, whereas the same group showed greater functional connectivity in a cortical network including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). CONCLUSIONS By combining VR with ICA on fMRI data, we detected patterns of functional connected areas associated with the flowing experience in a highly stressful situation which required engaging in prosocial decision-making. Importantly, we report that prosocial behavior varies between participants and that this variability is predicted by differential connectivity in dedicated functional brain networks. Our findings suggest that the higher degree of functional connectivity among AI and aMCC in the two groups that did not help the virtual human reflects the higher level of personal distress in these participants, consequently resulting in the decision not to risk personal damage and therefore act selfishly. Conversely, the significant result in the mPFC supports the hypothesis that this area is involved in altruistic decision (Waytz et al., 2012). Thus, the interplay between these two networks is likely to determine the behavioral response of participants: the activity of mPFC prompts to helping behaviors, conversely, the AI and aMCC seem to be responsible for the evaluation of risk during the entire task and the prevailing self-oriented choice. 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