Public attitudes towards neurotechnology: Findings from two experiments concerning Brain Stimulation Devices (BSDs) and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study contributes to the emerging literature on public perceptions of neurotechnological devices (NTDs) in their medical and non-medical applications, depending on their invasiveness, framing effects, and interindividual differences related to personal needs and values. We conducted two web-based between-subject experiments (2×2×2) using a representative, nation-wide sample of the adult population in Germany. Using vignettes describing how two NTDs, brain stimulation devices (BSDs; NExperiment 1 = 1,090) and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs; NExperiment 2 = 1,089), function, we randomly varied the purpose (treatment vs. enhancement) and invasiveness (noninvasive vs. invasive) of the NTD, and assessed framing effects (variable order of assessing moral acceptability first vs. willingness to use first). We found a moderate moral acceptance and willingness to use BSDs and BCIs. Respondents preferred treatment over enhancement purposes and noninvasive over invasive devices. We also found a framing effect and explored the role of personal characteristics as indicators of personal needs and values (e.g., stress, religiosity, and gender). Our results suggest that the future demand for BSDs or BCIs may depend on the purpose, invasiveness, and personal needs and values. These insights can inform technology developers about the public's needs and concerns, and enrich legal and ethical debates.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".