SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE

A 'subliminal message' is a signal or message embedded in another object, designed to pass below the normal limits of perception. These messages are indiscernible by the conscious mind, but allegedly affect the subconscious or deeper mind. Subliminal techniques have occasionally been used in advertising and propaganda; the purpose, effectiveness and frequency of such techniques is debated.

Contents

History

Effectiveness

Audio

Instances

Television and video

Allegations

Fictional references

Persuasion

References in Popular Culture

References

Notes

Bibliography

Further reading

See also

External links

History

E.W. Scripture published in 1898 ''The New Psychology'', which described the basic principles of subliminal messages.^[1] In 1900, Knight Dunlap, an American professor of psychology, flashed an "imperceptible shadow" to subjects while showing them a Müller-Lyer illusion containing two lines with pointed arrows at both ends which create an illusion of different lengths. Dunlap claimed that the shadow influenced his subjects subliminally in their judgment of the lengths of the lines. Although these results were not verified, American psychologist Harry Levi Hollingworth reported in an advertising textbook that such subliminal messages could be used by advertisers.^[2]
During World War II, the tachistoscope, an instrument which projects pictures for an extremely brief period, was used to train soldiers to recognize enemy airplanes.¹ Today the tachistoscope is used to increase reading speed or to test sight.^[3]
In 1957, market researcher James Vicary claimed that quickly flashing messages on a movie screen, in Fort Lee, New Jersey, had influenced people to purchase more food and drinks. Vicary coined the term ''subliminal advertising'' and formed the Subliminal Projection Company based on a six-week test. Vicary claimed that during the presentation of the movie Picnic he used a tachistoscope to project the words "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat popcorn" for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals. Vicary asserted that during the test, sales of popcorn and Coke in that New Jersey theater increased 57.8 percent and 18.1 percent respectively.^1[4]
Vicary's claims were promoted in Vance Packard's book ''The Hidden Persuaders'',^[5] and led to a public outcry, and to many conspiracy theories of governments and cults using the technique to their advantage. The practice of subliminal advertising was subsequently banned in the United Kingdom and Australia,² and by American networks and the National Association of Broadcasters in 1958.⁴
But in 1958, Vicary conducted a television test in which he flashed the message "telephone now" hundreds of times during a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program, and found no increase in telephone calls. In 1962, Vicary admitted that he fabricated his claim, the story itself being a marketing ploy.^[6] Efforts to replicate the results of Vicary's reports have never resulted in success.¹
In 1973, commercials in the United States and Canada for the game ''Hūsker Dū?'' flashed the message "Get it".⁵ During the same year, Wilson Bryan Key's book ''Subliminal Seduction'' claimed that subliminal techniques were widely used in advertising.⁴ Public concern was sufficient to cause the FCC to hold hearings in 1974. The hearings resulted in an FCC policy statement stating that subliminal advertising was "contrary to the public interest" and "intended to be deceptive".⁴ Subliminal advertising was also banned in Canada following the broadcasting of Hūsker Dū? ads there.¹
A study conducted by the United Nations concluded that "the cultural implications of subliminal indoctrination is a major threat to human rights throughout the world."^[7]
In 1985, Dr. Joe Stuessy testified to the United States Senate at the Parents Music Resource Center hearings that:

The message [of a piece of heavy metal music] may also be covert or subliminal. Sometimes subaudible tracks are mixed in underneath other, louder tracks. These are heard by the subconscious but not the conscious mind. Sometimes the messages are audible but are backwards, called backmasking. There is disagreement among experts regarding the effectiveness of subliminals. We need more research on that.^[8]

Stuessy's written testimony stated that:

Some messages are presented to the listener backwards. While listening to a normal forward message (often somewhat nonsensical), one is simultaneously being treated to a back-wards message (in other words, the lyric sounds like one set of words going forward, and a different set of words going backwards). Some experts believe that while the conscious mind is absorbing the forward lyric, the subconscious is working overtime to decipher the backwards message.^[9]

Effectiveness

Subconscious stimulus by single words is well established to be modestly effective in changing human behavior or emotions.^[10] However there is no strong evidence that messages in advertising can or have been used effectively.^[11][12]
Perception of subliminal messages is a type of subconscious cognition. Unlike unconscious tasks such as attending to one signal in a noisy environment while keeping track of other signals (e.g., listening to one voice out of many in a crowded room) and automatic tasks such as breathing, subliminal message cognition cannot be done consciously.
An important question about subliminal perception is: How much of the message is perceived? That is, is the whole message sensed and fully digested, or are only its main and simpler features? There are at least two schools of thought about this. One of them argues that only the simpler features of unconscious signals could be perceived. The second school of thought argues that unconscious cognition is comprehensive and that much more is perceived than can be verbalized.
Proponents of the power of subliminal messages claim they gain influence or power from the fact that they circumvent the critical functions of the conscious mind, and therefore subliminal suggestions are potentially more powerful than ordinary suggestions. This route to influence or persuasion would be akin to auto-suggestion or hypnosis, wherein the subject is encouraged to be (or somehow induced to be) relaxed so that suggestions are directed to deeper (more gullible) parts of the mind; some observers have suggested that the unconscious mind is incapable of critical refusal of hypnotic or subliminal suggestions.
However, critics of the theory have suggested that the effect of subliminal messages would at best be no more than that of a glimpse of a billboard in the corner of an eye. Controlled experiments that attempt to demonstrate the influence of subliminal messages generally find little to no effect.²
The book ''Mind Hacks'' by O'Reilly Press states that subliminal messages are effective in "priming" (putting a half-processed idea in the mind, leading to increased familiarity or a "tip of the tongue" situation where the idea is present but is not articulated until triggered). It also states that for this reason it has limited application in persuasion, and only slightly more use in advertising. The text states that additionally only one word or image is perceived subliminally most of the time, and that the primary way in which it can be used in advertising is by creating a familiarity with a product that has not been seen before, familiarity that could be misinterpreted as preference. The text references an experiment in which faces were flashed subliminally before the test subject rated a group of faces as to which were preferable—this experiment can be duplicated online, through the URL given in the book.
In 2006, a study by Dr. Johan Karremans at the University of Nijmegen suggested that subliminal messaging may have an effect when the message is goal-relevant. In their experiments, half of the participants was subliminally primed with Lipton Ice (i.e., "Lipton Ice" was repeatedly flashed on a computer screen for 24 milliseconds), while the other half was primed with a control non-word. Subsequently, the prime positively influenced participants' choice for Lipton Ice over another soft drink, but only for participants who already were thirsty. Participants who were not thirsty were not influenced by the subliminal messages. ^[13]
According to a 2007 study by Mathias Pessiglione et al. published in ''Science'', subjects would exert more force on a hand grip in order to receive a portion of a British pound than they would exert for a pence, even when the duration of the display which indicated the payment type was short enough that subjects were not consciously aware of it. ^[14]
In "The Secret Sales Pitch: An Overview of Subliminal Advertising," author/attorney August Bullock argues the case that subliminal messages do affect behavior and are commonly employed in media.
He proposes a theory he calls "The Ambiguity Principle," in which he maintains that carefully constructed ambiguities can be tools of subliminal persuasion. When a stimulus has two meanings, and one of the meanings resonates with a repressed emotion, the disturbing meaning is repressed the same way that the emotion is repressed. The repressed meaning influences the viewer on a subliminal or unconscious level.
For example, the cigarette slogan "If you got crushed in the clinch with your soft pack, try our hard pack" has two meanings. On the surface it says "Our cigarettes are better because they come in hard packages rather than soft ones." An alternate interpretation, however, is "If you are anxious about impotency, smoke our cigarettes to compensate." The secondary "impotency" interpretation is repressed because it is disturbing, just at the viewer's sexual apprehensions are likely repressed. The repressed meaning activates unconscious anxieties and induces consumption -- because people smoke more when they are uncomfortable.
If the ad directly challenged the viewer by proclaiming "You are impotent, aren't you?" the viewer would be offended and would avoid the product. Because the message is presented as a subliminal ambiguity, however, the viewer is influenced by the stimulus without becoming aware of it.
Bullock maintains there are three kinds of subliminal ambiguities: in the meaning of text, in the meaning of a picture, and in the form of an optical illusion (where, for example, ice cubes in a liquor ad might be interpreted as skulls or death images). In the cigarette ad discussed above, the backbone of a female model appears to have been airbrushed to resemble an erect phallus. Bullock maintains that modern media often contain these three forms of subliminal messages. He cites many authorities that corroborate his thesis. Bullock's work is extremely controversial and has been heatedly rebuffed by advertising establishment.

Audio

Backmasking, an audio technique in which sounds are recorded backwards onto a track that is meant to be played forwards, produces messages that sound like gibberish to the conscious mind. Gary Greenwald, a fundamentalist Christian preacher, claims that these messages can be heard subliminally, and can induce listeners towards, in the case of rock music, sex and drug use.^[15] However, this is not generally accepted as fact.^[16]
Following the 1950s subliminal message panic, many businesses have sprung up purporting to offer helpful subliminal audio tapes that supposedly improve the health of the listener. However, there is no evidence for the therapeutic effectiveness of such tapes.^[17]

Instances

Television and video

In 1978, Wichita, Kansas TV station KAKE-TV received special permission from the police to place a subliminal message in a report on the BTK Killer in an effort to get him to turn himself in. The image, which appeared for a split second, showed a pair of glasses (an image thought to hold significance to him) and text that read "Now call the chief." [1] The attempt was unsuccessful, and police reported no increased volume of calls afterward, though the killer was eventually caught in 2005.
Before the re-election of French president François Mitterrand in 1988, a subliminal picture of him was mixed in the title sequence of French national television daily news show, and it appeared for several consecutive days.
The subject was also prominently featured in the 1999 film ''Fight Club''. Pictures of the main character, Tyler Durden, flash onscreen at various points during the earlier parts of the film, before Durden is introduced.^[18] Also, Durden is shown at his job as a projectionist, splicing pornographic flash frames into a film he is showing.^[19] A picture of a penis flashes before the end credits.^[20]
During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, a television ad campaigning for Republican candidate George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from the foreground to the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS flashed on the screen, one frame showed only the last part, RATS.^[21][22] The FCC looked into the matter,^[23] but no penalties were ever assessed in the case.
In the British alternative comedy show ''The Young Ones'', a number of subliminal images were present in the original and repeated broadcasts. Images included a gull coming into land, a tree frog jumping through the air, and the end credits of the movie ''Carry On Cowboy''. No explanation for these images was given and their relevance, if any, to the plot of the episodes in which they appear is debatable. Although they may fall foul of the FCC guidelines, these images ''do'' appear in the U.S. boxset DVD ''Every Stoopid Episode''.
In a December 16, 1973 episode of ''Columbo'' entitled "Double Exposure", Robert Culp's character returns to the crime scene and is incriminated by a subliminal cut that he placed in a movie.^[24][25]
A McDonald's logo appeared for one frame during the Food Network's ''Iron Chef America'' series on 2007-01-27, leading to claims that this was an instance of subliminal advertising. The Food Network replied that it was simply a glitch.^[26]
In Formula One racing, the paint scheme of many cars would carry messages intended to look as if they were of banned tobacco products in many Grands Prix where tobacco advertising was banned. A similar procedure was used by NASCAR driver Jeff Burton after the AT&T Mobility advertising was banned by a court order in 2007.

Allegations

An internet-based prank flash called "Subliminal Messages" or "Subliminal Music and Images " features two supposed visual messages and an audio message. The first is the word "SEX" hidden in a gin advertisement (this message was one of those alleged by Wilson Bryan Key). The second is a woman masturbating, hidden in an advertisement for a flooring company. The animation then switches to the text of the Lord's Prayer, and starts playing Cradle of Filth's "Dinner at Deviant Palace" backward, along with faint noises. In the middle of the song, a loud scream is heard, and a series of disturbing images is flashed. The last image is a gray scale image of a harlequin fetus , which fades away, followed by a message, "Never trust flash animations talking about subliminal stuff!"
Some groups have made claims that subliminal messages can be found in various forms of popular entertainment, such as the supposed use of "backward messages" in rock and roll songs. Many of these purported messages are Satanic; for example, if the Led Zeppelin song "Stairway to Heaven" is played backwards, lyrics including "Oh here's to my sweet Satan" can supposedly be made out. Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" is also supposed to contain a pro-marijuana message: "It's fun to smoke marijuana". These two messages have not been confirmed by the artists, and have not been proven to exist.
In December 2005, an independent music CD titled Morality Rock^[27] was released, with subtitle "Music inspired by the subliminal backwards messages in the speeches of George W. Bush." Morality Rock claimed to have discovered satanic, sexual, and drug-related messages when playing President Bush's speeches in reverse.
In February 2007, it was discovered that 87 Konami slot machines in Ontario (OLG) casinos displayed a brief winning hand image before the game would begin. Government officials worried that the image subliminally persuaded gamblers to continue gambling; the company claimed that the image was a "coding error". The machines were removed pending a fix by Konami.^[28]

Fictional references

While their ultimate efficacy is somewhat controversial, subliminal messages have a long history in television shows, movies, and novels.

Persuasion

Other references deal with the supposed frequent use of subliminal messages to persuade people, in advertising and propaganda.
Governments are often depicted as employing subliminal messages in propaganda. The movie ''Josie and the Pussycats'' described a long lasting plot whereby the U.S. government was controlling trends by inserting subliminal messages in popular music. Furthermore, towards the end of the film, a government agent shuts down the operation, saying that subliminal advertising works better in films. The words "Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie ever" are then spoken rapidly in voice-over and displayed quickly on screen, with the words "Join the Army" in smaller letters below it. And in the 2005 science fiction movie ''Serenity'', the Alliance uses subliminal messages broadly disseminated in commercials and other video to cause River Tam to go berserk. It only works on River because she was subjected to Alliance training and conditioning.
Many references deal specifically with the military. An episode of ''The Simpsons'' involved Bart and his friends joining a boy band, the Party Posse. While watching a video for the Party Posse, Lisa notices the phrase "Yvan Eht Nioj" being repeated continuously by belly-dancers. She plays the video in reverse and finds that it means "Join the Navy". Also, an Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster can be seen in the video frame by frame. The joke was that the United States sends subliminal messages in order to recruit people. In addition, the art of "superliminal messages" was demonstrated to Lisa; a Navy representative leans out a window, picks a random passerby, and shouts "Hey you! Join the Navy!" And in an episode of ''Malcolm in the Middle'' titled "Reese joins the Army (2)", one of the drill sergeants comments about the other's restored confidence in the Army "I guess the subliminal advertising's working after all." his fellow drill sergeant then matter-of-factly states "the army doesn't use subliminal ads" and then the pair slowly turn and look at each other. Not too different from the joke in ''The Simpsons'' episode mentioned above, this episode was a joking reference to the low military recruiting numbers in 2004 suggesting that the U.S. military uses such things in a tactic of desperation. And in an episode of ''Babylon 5'', during a scene which represents a public service announcement for Psi Corps, the words "TRUST THE CORPS" and "THE CORPS IS YOUR FRIEND" appear on screen for four frames, double the length of what the FCC designates as subliminal.
An early episode of the X-Files deals with a small town plagued by killings where the perpetrators are influenced by messages appearing on ATMs and other electronical devices. Mulder refers to the use of subliminal messages in several instances. An episode of ''Family Guy'' jokes about subliminal messages for smoking in television. It shows an old black and white TV show which in the middle of its dialogue is interrupted by a suited man stating "Smoke" in a monotone voice.

References in Popular Culture

★ In June-July 2007, Sprite used a type of obvious subliminal message, involving yellow (lemon) and green (lime) objects such as cars. The objects would then be shown inconspicuously in the same setting, while showing the word "lymon" (combining the words lime and lemon) on screen for a second at a time. They called this "Sub'lymon'al Advertising." The previous year, Sprite used a similar advertising campaign, but this time it was tied in to The Lost Experience, an alternate reality game.

★ In , there is an experiment carried out to see if viewers would react to subliminal messages. One was shown during an experiment to discover which substance provides the best skid; the message appeared when a brainiac hit a bale of hay. The second message appeared across a T-Shirt of a brainiac saying 'Call your mum', and the third said 'scratch your nose' when a sound wave hit the Braniac logo. At the end of the show, people were shown in a theatre watching that episode. The test showed that the messages barely impacted the audience. The subliminal content in this episode was legal, as its presence was announced at the beginning and end of the episode.

★ In Week 11 of in which candidates have to create an ad for the Delta's former low-cost commercial airlines Song, the team Matchstick used a 1/48th of a frame image at the bottom-right corner with the Song Airlines logo.

★ In an episode of Saved By the Bell Zach uses subliminal messaging in a tape to convince Kelly to go to the dance with him.

★ In an episode of Designing Women, Mary Jo encourages her daughter Claudia to preserve her virginity by repeatedly muttering "Don't have sex" under her breath during conversations, then feigning ignorance when Claudia asks her to repeat herself.

★ The Derren Brown live show ''Something Wicked This Way Comes'' was based on the apparent power of subliminal messaging.

References

Notes

1. The Straight Dope: Does subliminal advertising work?
2. The Cargo-Cult Science of Subliminal Persuasion Anthony R. Pratkanis
3. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tachistoscope
4. Urban Legends Reference Pages: Business (Subliminal Advertising)
5. The Absolute Threshold Level and Subliminal Messages
6. Boese, Alex (2002). ''The Museum of Hoaxes: A Collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium'', E. P. Dutton, ISBN 0-525-94678-0. pages. 137-38.
7. Rock's Hidden Persuader: The Truth About Backmasking, , Dan, Peters, Bethany House Publishers, 1985, Cited in U.S. Senate, page 125.
8. U.S. Senate, page 118.
9. U.S. Senate, page 125.
10. Scientific Consensus and Expert Testimony: Lessons from the Judas Priest Trial Timothy Moore
11.
12. Subliminal Perception: Facts and Fallacies Timothy E. Moore
13. Subliminal advertising may work after all
14. How the Brain Translates Money into Force: A Neuroimaging Study of Subliminal Motivation, , Mathias, Pessiglione, Science,
15. Psychological Sketches, , John R., Vokey, Psyence Ink, ,
16. Backmasking on records: Real, or hoax?
17. Subliminal Perception: Facts and Fallacies Timothy E. Moore
18. http://www.eeggs.com/items/15885.html
19. http://www.screenit.com/movies/1999/fight_club.html
20. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/crazycredits
21. Crowley, Candy. "Bush says 'RATS' ad not meant as subliminal message" CNN.com, 2000-9-12. Retrieved on December 16, 2006
22. Smoking Pistols: George "Rat Ad" Bush and the Subliminal Kid
23. http://www.fcc.gov/Speeches/Furchtgott_Roth/2000/sphfr011.html
24. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=130155
25. http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/amia-l/2005/12/msg00182.html
26. It was a glitch, not a subliminal ad, for McDonald's on Food Network
27. http://www.moralityrock.com/
28. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012094

Bibliography

★ Bullock, August (2004). The Secret Sales Pitch: An overview of subliminal advertising, Norwich Publishers, San Jose, CA

★ Dixon, N. F. (1971). Subliminal Perception: The nature of a controversy, McGraw-Hill, New York.

★ Greeenwald, Anthony W. (1992). New Look 3: Unconscious Cognition Reclaimed, American Psychologist, 47.

★ Holender, D. (1986). Semantic activation without conscious identification in dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey and appraisal. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 1-23.

★ Merikle, P. M., and M. Daneman (1998). Psychological Investigations of Unconscious Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies.

★ Seitz and Watanabe (2003). Is subliminal learning really passive. Nature, 422, 36.

★ United States Senate (1985). Record Labeling: Hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. United States Senate, Ninety-ninth Congress, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records (September 19, 1985). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Further reading

★ Boese, Alex (2006). ''Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.'', Harcourt, Inc., ISBN 0-15-603083-7, 193-95

See also

★ ''The Hidden Persuaders''

★ Blipvert

★ Robert Zajonc

★ Hoaxes

★ List of hoaxes

★ Backmasking

External links

★ Example from The Secret Sales Pitch: An Overview of Subliminal Advertising, by August Bullock

★ Facts, Articles and Speculation Regarding the Human Subconscious Mind

★ Subliminal Seduction: How Did the Uproar over Subliminal Advertising Affect the Advertising Industry?

★ Subliminal Advertising Examples

★ Article on Subliminal Messaging & Behavior Correction

★ Scientific Consensus and Expert Testimony: Lessons from the Judas Priest Trial

★ 1984 testimony about subliminal messages to the Federal Communications commission: