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Subliminal messages work because they are unconscious and can be easily linked with other stimuli.
Subliminal messages are images or sounds that have been embedded into another image or sound. They can be designed to trigger any number of responses, such as craving a product or feeling more confident. They're often used in advertisements, hidden in logos and television broadcasts to help companies achieve their goals. However, in the 1950s, scientist James Vicary claimed he had boosted sales of Coca Cola and popcorn by showing subliminal messages during films—a claim that was quickly debunked by other scientists who said there was no empirical evidence for the effect. In 1957 a U.S. surgeon-general's report revealed that some medical schools were using subliminal messages in their classroom lectures, but this only became public when one student complained in 1961.
In 1969, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the "National Broadcasting Standards and Public Affairs" Code, which barred television and radio stations from using "any device designed to deliver a message below the threshold of hearing." However, in 1974 a district court judge ruled that this was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment right to free speech. Four years later, in 1978, the FCC updated the code to include "visual" subliminal messages.
In 1989, research by French psychologist Roger Shepard and U.S. psychologist Michael Persinger showed that subliminal stimuli could affect human behavior with measurable effects.
Since then, there have been many brain experiments demonstrating the existence of subliminal images and sounds that influence people's beliefs and behaviors. In 2013 a group of researchers published studies of brain responses to ostensibly random images in which two were slightly different from the others—one was prime while the other was a control image—and their findings have been widely reported as proving that these subconscious images cause belief systems to change.
Questioning these studies, however, shows that although the targets of the images were different from one study to another, they all used extremely low levels of subliminal stimuli. The researchers' claims seem to question the very concept of subliminal messages.
In April 2016 a group of scientists from Biophysics Institute (TU Wien), Institute for Psychological Sciences (TU Wien), and Department for Psychology (University of Oldenburg) participated in a workshop on Subliminal Perception and Subliminal Communication at the Faculty of Philosophy, University at Oldenburg with Dr. Fritz Strack. In the workshop, Prof. Strack spoke about how an affect infusion model can be used to explain different effects of unconscious priming. The group then proposed to test the model in a real-life experiment, where political groups would compete for demonstration space on public grounds where subliminal stimuli were inserted into the environment that were not consciously noticed by people. With this idea and with funding from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), they decided to conduct this research using "subliminal partisan primes" in a setting similar to real life, while keeping the exact nature of their experiment under wraps until they could publish their findings in a scientific journal.
Since then, the team has continued to run tests and refine their method. They realized that they needed more participants as well as a larger sample size to confirm their results, so they designed new experiments that would best replicate the way people experience subliminal stimuli in real life. Recently they published those results in a journal article and presented them to other scientists at conferences.
Subliminal messages can be anything we choose to perceive them as, including images or words projected into an already existing image or sound which can be heard only when the message is played at a very low volume. These "priming" subliminal messages share many of the same properties as optical illusions. They are processed differently in the brain and interpreted by the viewer as something that is not actually there. These messages are also processed fast, like an optical illusion.
Subliminal message stimuli can be used to influence consumer behavior and reduce prejudice or hate toward people associated with certain social stereotypes. Highly prejudiced people were less prejudiced when they were exposed to subliminal images of a black face masked by five-pointed stars than when they were exposed to the same image without the subliminal priming. This suggests that unconscious priming may help solve some of our social problems by modifying beliefs about members of various social groups.
Subliminal messages have been used to improve cognitive performance, enhance perceptual sensitivity and performance, as well as manipulate attitudes toward political issues and candidates in the United States. The most common way subliminal messages are used is to influence consumer preferences. For instance, after watching an advertisement for a popular brand of sugar substitute, people who would otherwise have eschewed sugar substitutes were more likely to choose this particular brand over competing ones after watching an advertisement that primed them with the message "subliminally (unconsciously)" that they prefer sugar.
Similar findings were reported with regards to the brand name of KFC, showing that people primed with the message "the Colonel's secret recipe is more important to me than health" were more likely to buy and consume KFC products than those not exposed to subliminal priming messages.
Some studies have shown that subliminal priming can also influence decisions related to other aspects of life. For instance, people who saw a series of videos in which actors playing children engaged in sexual activity (through kissing and fondling) performed worse on tests of executive functioning than did people who saw a series of videos that did not include any scenes of sexual activity.
Likewise, in a study by Gawrych and Sigall, participants listened to happy or sad music while the researchers measured the skin conductance responses of their hands. They found that those who listened to sad music showed more activity in response to affectively aversive stimuli than those who listened to happy music. This means that emotion is often more important than any rational thought.
In another study, participants were asked to choose one of two cell phones (the other brand was not identified). A subliminal message at the initial stages of choice was used as a way for priming the target decision. Afterwards, both cell phones were presented at their full retail price, and the participant had to make a decision. After the final choice, participants were asked to state whether they would have paid more or less than the initial offer. The study found that participants primed with mood-congruent words : "I prefer the _______________ brand and will pay more" chose the alternative primed phone at a higher price than those who did not have any subliminal priming.
The researchers suggested that this effect may be explained by people making a commitment to purchase one consumer product and then preferring it even after they know that it is already on sale at a lower price.
Conclusion: The study shows that the use of subliminal priming can influence consumer behavior as they tend to choose the product that is associated with their preferred emotion or mood.
As with all forms of advertising, there are also concerns about whether subliminal messages could be used in unethical ways. One concern involves political propaganda and other forms of persuasion. For instance, partisan groups in a country like the United States might try to influence the outcome of an upcoming election by using subliminal images and sounds during political rallies, where people's feelings for their candidate may be heightened by the strength and tone of his or her speech, music playing in the background at a rally, or loud cheering from supporters.