Subliminal Messaging: how does it Work and where Can be Used

Defining subliminal can be something of which that cannot be easily perceived; but may be remembered because of the constant repetition involved. Sub means below, and liminal means simply the line, this line referring to consciousness. So basically, subliminal is something that can penetrate the mind below the threshold of consciousness, something subconscious. An example of subliminal used as an adjective is something called ‘subliminal messaging,’ which essentially means a message that could be remembered even if the person is not consciously aware of it.

Over the years, I have had a huge fondness for subliminal messaging, researching online on them being used in advertisements, children’s movies, and posters. Some can be so subtle and obscure that you cannot even tell it is there, while others are clear and obvious but embedded in such a way that makes it go by unnoticeably.

Subliminal messages can be delivered in two ways, either as an image that is flashed before you quickly enough to go unnoticed by the human eye, which would be called Visual stimuli. If the subliminal messages are being distributed via movies, television, or the internet, the image flashed before you should not be perceived visually but would be able to be registered by the subconscious. Subliminal messages can also be used as audio messages that have been embedded within a track of music that is undetectable by the listener; this is called Auditory stimuli. If the subliminal message is being delivered auditorily, the messages would be inaudible to the listener and evade the conscious mind but be able to be registered specifically by the subconscious mind.

Subliminal messages work by bypassing the conscious and piercing the subconscious mind with assertions that bid new ways of thinking, for example, having a different political mindset and acting; this would be buying a specific product. Although not unquestionably conclusively proven to work, it is believed that subliminal messages expand their potential value by being able to bypass the filters of the conscious mind’s awareness. This would permit info that was perhaps opposing to what the conscious mind believes and therefore filters out to penetrate through to the subconscious mind. For example, a person wishing to get better at something they are not good at, such as a sport, may be presented with a statement or affirmation that they are already the best in the world at that sport. However, they might discard that with their conscious mind as being blatantly untrue.

Although the controversy regarding whether subliminal stimuli or messages are effective or not will always be a topic hotly debated, there is a considerable amount of evidence pleasing the idea that we can and do register such stimuli at a subconscious level in the brain. Discounted as absolutely unreasonable in the past, new technologies, such as magnetic image resonance imaging, have finally proved, beyond doubt, that the brain registers and replies to such stimuli in explicit means.

The most famous study of subliminal advertisement was one experiment a man named James Vicary conducted at a New Jersey movie theater in 1957. Vicary placed a tachistoscope, a device that displays an image for a specific amount of time, in the theater’s projection booth, and all throughout the playing of a movie called Picnic, he flashed a couple of different messages on the screen every five seconds, and the messages each displayed for only 1/3000th of a second at a time. The result of displaying these imperceptible suggestions, “Drink Coca-Cola” and “Hungry? Eat Popcorn”, was actually an amazing 18% increase in Coca-Cola sales and a huge 58% jump in popcorn purchases. This study demonstrated the potential power that subliminal advertising has to force, subconsciously, unwary buyers into buying things they would not have otherwise considered buying.

On the other hand, however, James Vicary claimed later that this study was conducted with a very small number of people and, to put the cherry on the cake for the counterargument of the effectiveness of subliminal messaging, he went on to claim that the experiment did not even happen after all. This did not affect countries like England, though, which later banned the use of subliminal messaging in advertisements. There have been numerous proven studies in favor of subliminal messaging effectiveness. One of them conducted was called The Effect of Subliminal Stimulation of Symbiotic Fantasies on College Students for Self-Disclosure in Group Counseling.

This is its basic overview:

• The study

The Effect of Subliminal Stimulation of Symbiotic Fantasies on College Students for Self-Disclosure in Group Counseling. By Edward Linehan and James O’Toole at St. John’s University, Jamaica, New York.

• Methodology of study

A total of 36 undergraduate female students enrolled in courses at the Jersey City State College volunteered to take part in a study involving group counseling. They all had a GPA of 3.0 or above and were all between 18 to 23 years old. They were randomly assigned to either an experimental group or a control group. The experimenter visited classes, with the consent of the teachers, to explain the purpose of the study and to solicit volunteers. All were told by the experimenter that the study would involve three-hour long group counseling sessions with six members in each group, conducted by an experienced counselor. They were also told that the three counseling sessions would be taped. In addition, the students were told that participation in the study could help them with decision-making skills and earn them $5 per counseling session. So overall, we were presented with perks as well as an easy experiment to partake in.

The same experimenter served as a group counselor in the study. He spent 6 hours practicing the client-centered approach and the effective use of self-disclosures in group counseling. These disclosures were defined as statements by the counselor about himself communicated verbally to the subjects in the group counseling sessions. The statements were short comments about his own experiences, beliefs, and attitudes. The counselor ran several practice sessions for each disclosure condition, using volunteer subjects under conditions identical to the actual experiment.

The experimental subjects received the subliminal message “Mommy and I are one,” and the control subjects received the subliminal message “People are walking” before each group counseling session. The stimuli were presented using a tachistoscope, the same device used by James Vicary in his study that was designed to present stimuli subliminally. The subject looked through an eyepiece at a blank field, and the stimulus was exposed for about four milliseconds. The dependent variable was the number of self-disclosures in relation to the number of self-disclosures made by the counselor.

• Conclusion of subliminal study

In the study, the main hypothesis was that students stimulated with the “Mommy and I are one” message would exhibit a significantly greater number of self-disclosures than students stimulated with the control stimulus “People are walking.” The main basis for this expectation was that some of the findings indicate that subliminal symbiotic stimulation can aid the counseling process, and client self-disclosures are viewed as a sign that counseling is effective.

In addition to the main hypothesis, two underlying hypotheses were proposed. The students were asked to indicate to the experimenter which message they thought they had received and were later then informed of the message they had actually received. Of the 36 subjects, 28 offered a guess; of them, 13 were from the experimental group, and 15 were from the control group. Most of these thought the message had something to do with confidence, enthusiasm, communication, and openness in counseling. However, none were able to say what the message actually was. They offered specific guesses, such as ‘Be assertive,’ ‘Get going,” etc. Whether guesses were very specific or extremely vague, practically every guess was concerned with the above qualities. There were actually no clear and obvious differences between the experimental group and the control group, and no one could guess even a single word from the actual portrayed messages. This does support the fact that subliminal messages are very obscure and practically invisible to the naked human eye.

Nevertheless, the students, when presented with the messages “Mommy and I are one” and “People are walking,” articulated being surprised and mild skepticism when they were informed of what the two messages actually were. Several seemed to have difficulty believing what was said.

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