They’re everywhere … appearing on billboards and in magazines, in television commercials and in movies. Sometimes they can even be detected in popular songs (but only if you play them backward). They’re subliminal messages, and they control what we buy, what we think, and what we do, all without our conscious minds even realizing it. How do they work? Or maybe the better question is—do they really work at all?
Making a Mountain out of a Myth
In 1957, a market researcher claimed that he flashed suggestive phrases on the screen during the playing of a film—suggestions like “Drink Coca-Cola” and “Eat Popcorn,” which lasted no longer than 1/3000th of a second. He grandly proclaimed that after flashing these suggestions every five seconds, concessions sales experienced amazing increases, and declared that “subliminal advertising” was successful.
Subliminal comes from Latin words meaning “under the threshold.” Subliminal messages are those that are said to exist just under the threshold of human perception. They are the images and sounds we see and process in our unconscious mind, like minor details we don’t fully notice or things that happen too quickly for our brains to register. Subliminal messages are said to penetrate the unconscious mind, creating a desire that we can’t consciously understand.
Scientists and psychologists know that our brains can indeed pick up information without realizing it. It’s how poker players can tell when their opponent is bluffing, even though they can’t articulate why, and it’s the basis of our intuition, the little voice that tells us that something is wrong even when our conscious minds don’t pick up on troubling details.
Unconscious processing isn’t inherently sinister, but when the American public heard about Vicary’s idea of using subliminal messages in advertising, people went crazy. The media picked up on the story and television and radio stations began airing subliminal ads at a fever pitch. They became so rampant, and advertising became so mistrusted, that legislation banning their use was even debated in Congress. In 1973, a doctor named Wilson Key published a book called Subliminal Seduction, which alleged that most modern advertisements were full of hidden symbolism and images. He even claimed to see the word “sex” spelled out in the ice cubes on a liquor advertisement. In 1974, the FCC stated that subliminal advertising was “contrary to the public interest,” and that stations who aired subliminal messages risked having their broadcast license revoked.
Manufacturing Reality
The big problem? Subliminal messages don’t work, and never did. Vicary himself was never able to duplicate the results of the infamous movie theater experiment, and eventually he admitted that he had fabricated his findings as a marketing stunt. In fact, some historians doubt that he ever conducted the experiment at all, and no studies since have ever been able to show that subliminal messages or advertising have any affect on people’s behavior or sales of any particular product.
The truth about subliminal messages hasn’t stopped some people from claiming that companies still use hidden imagery to sell products, and it hasn’t prevented some companies from actually trying it out. There are many claims that TV commercials and other advertisements use unconscious suggestion to try to encourage behavior. Although ads often feature less-than-subtle sexual imagery or even overt innuendo, the evidence for subliminal messages, such as phallic images or covert messages written in a model’s hair, is tenuous.
