The role of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in dynamic attitude changes in naturalistic settings

Attitudes change gradually and spontaneously in daily life, yet the neural mechanisms supporting such dynamic shifts remain poorly understood. Leveraging naturalistic fMRI paradigms across two studies, we investigated how neural dynamics track and implement attitude change during exposure to persuasive arguments. Our findings highlight the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) as a central hub in this process. Individuals with more similar trajectories of attitude change exhibited greater similarity in the temporal dynamics of dACC activity and its functional connectivity with other brain regions, particularly the default mode network (DMN). These neural dynamics further predicted whether an individual changed their attitude over time, and at the precise moment of change, dACC-centered connectivity predicted the direction of that change. Additionally, individuals with higher intolerance of uncertainty (IU) showed stronger coupling between neural and behavioral similarity, suggesting that IU may serve as a trait-level modulator of this neural process. Together, our findings provide a dACC-centered, process-level account of the neural mechanisms underlying dynamic attitude change, bridging the gap between controlled laboratory research and real-time, naturalistic attitude change in daily life.