Sublimibal messages (no spam)

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Sun Apr 14, 2002 5:00 pm

After having brought it up in the Game addiction thread, I feel this is a topic that hasn't been touched on, and should be. Whats everyone's call on this? Do some of us notice it, but ignore it? Do you think it really works? Is it obvious?

Gruntboy · Post by **Gruntboy** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 2:40 am

Depends on the person receiving it, doesn't it. No matter how good the advertising etc. if someone is strong willed, or maybe just dull, they won't go for it. Some people are just highly suggestible on the other hand.

Just look at Homer - "Oh Lisa, that's a pile of rich creamery-butter" (example - not a spammy remark).

leedogg · Post by **leedogg** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 2:48 am

I don't think that subliminal(sp) messages would work on me...I am too thick headed.

I am not sure how it work, but they used to sell soundtracks over here that were supposed to boost confidence and relieve stress and so on ans so on.... they would have sounds like the beach or classical tunes with subliminal massage underneath the sound(supposedely). My mom used to listen to them and I never took to it...Too thick headed!

She swore that it helped her headaches. So I don't know....I think she liked to torment me.

CM · Post by CM » Mon Apr 15, 2002 2:51 am

Wasn't there an incident where Coke had these messages in its tv adverts?

Gruntboy · Post by **Gruntboy** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 3:22 am

Supposedly, Coca-Cola paid to have a single cell showing a Coke flash up at some point in cinema showings - people left feeling thirsty and in need of a coke. I don't recall if this is urban myth or not.

leedogg · Post by **leedogg** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 3:25 am

Originally posted by Gruntboy
Supposedly, Coca-Cola paid to have a single cell showing a Coke flash up at some point in cinema showings - people left feeling thirsty and in need of a coke. I don't recall if this is urban myth or not.

WOW...I didn't know that.

But it doesn't suprise me at all.

CM · Post by CM » Mon Apr 15, 2002 3:29 am

Thats what i was referring too.
But i wouldn't be surprised if Coke actually did it.

Kameleon · Post by **Kameleon** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 3:37 am

And then there's always that bit in Fight Club...

So as not to violate any rules, there was this study a few years back on Tomorrow's World (a science program) that I watched, and they did this thing where they broadcasted a diferent video to each part of the country, one with subliminals and one without, without telling us, and there was a telephone poll to see whether it affected people. I can't remember the exact scenario, we had to decide whether someone committed a crime or not, and one of the videos had subliminals which suggested that he had. The phone vote was about 30% higher to convict him where the subliminals were used.

leedogg · Post by **leedogg** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 3:54 am

Originally posted by Kameleon
<snip> I can't remember the exact scenario, we had to decide whether someone committed a crime or not, and one of the videos had subliminals which suggested that he had. The phone vote was about 30% higher to convict him where the subliminals were used.

That is interesting, but it shows that it doesn't work on everyone...Thick headed!

Kameleon · Post by **Kameleon** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 4:01 am

Originally posted by leedogg
That is interesting, but it shows that it doesn't work on everyone...Thick headed!

It's never meant to work on everyone, but if Coca-Cola starts selling 30% more, that's a lot of money for them

leedogg · Post by **leedogg** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 4:05 am

Originally posted by Kameleon

It's never meant to work on everyone, but if Coca-Cola starts selling 30% more, that's a lot of money for them

I don't disagree

But if coke is doing it, don't think that Pepsi isn't(hell look at the Britney commercials)

All these subliminal commercials may be why people are going nuts lately!

Gruntboy · Post by **Gruntboy** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 4:35 am

This with Coke was like 10 years ago.

The Fight Club style splicing of images is more sublimal than repeated drumming-in of Pepsi adverts - that's brain washing.

Get your methods of mass-population control correct people!

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 5:17 am

Originally posted by Gruntboy
Supposedly, Coca-Cola paid to have a single cell showing a Coke flash up at some point in cinema showings - people left feeling thirsty and in need of a coke. I don't recall if this is urban myth or not.

It is an urban myth, I think Coca-Cola put in a subliminal message in a movie sometime back in the 1960's or 70's, but it didn't work. Subliminal messaging has been thouroughly researched both in experimental psychology and by the military, and it is not at all working as well as one might think. AFAIR you can only manipulate people in a very basic way, not a precise way, like by showing subliminal commercials for a product like Coke, you can make people who are already thirsty more thirsty, but you can't make them buy Coke specifically - they are as likely to buy something else or just have some water.

If somebody is specifically interested in this topic, I'll dig up my old psychology books in the sediments

There are some recent version of this with subliminal messages, but it's called priming, and there is a method used in consciousness research that is called masking. For instance, you can prime a corticall blind person with a stimuli they are not consciously aware of having seen, but they will still remember it afterwords although they don't even recall every having "seen" it. Or you can show a brief flash of a picture of a spider to a patient with spider phobia, then mask the spider with a longer exposure for a picture of a nice flower. The patient is not aware of having seen the spider, he is only aware of havin seen the flower, but his nervous system still reacts with physical signs of fear.

I suppose this kind of stuff could be used for manipulation of people's mind.

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 7:26 am

Originally posted by C Elegans

It is an urban myth, I think Coca-Cola put in a subliminal message in a movie sometime back in the 1960's or 70's, but it didn't work. Subliminal messaging has been thouroughly researched both in experimental psychology and by the military, and it is not at all working as well as one might think. AFAIR you can only manipulate people in a very basic way, not a precise way, like by showing subliminal commercials for a product like Coke, you can make people who are already thirsty more thirsty, but you can't make them buy Coke specifically - they are as likely to buy something else or just have some water.

It was a hoax. Back in 1957, an advertising promotions specialist, James Vicary, claimed to increase popcorn sales by 58% and Coke sales by 18% through flashing subliminally perceived messages of "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry - Eat Popcorn" in a New Jersey theater. Although he was quickly disproved, his remarks slipped into Vance Packard's classic The Hidden Persuaders, and that was required reading even when I was in college.

However, we do have an enormous industry dedicated to satisfying people's need for quick fixes via subliminal messaging: no smoking tapes, eat less tapes, etc. Whether it truly works or not has never been proved conclusively one way or the other.

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 7:59 am

Now, could any of these sublimibal messages be tied into Pavlov's theories of behaviour?

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 8:40 am

Originally posted by fable
However, we do have an enormous industry dedicated to satisfying people's need for quick fixes via subliminal messaging: no smoking tapes, eat less tapes, etc. Whether it truly works or not has never been proved conclusively one way or the other.

Is this big in the US? Here in Sweden it's no market at all for this type of products. There have been some trials with "subliminal learning". and those did not work out. But as I mentioned above, different kinds of manipulations through stimuli that the targeted person is not aware of is possible, although it's not called subliminal messaging any longer.

posted by Aegis[i/]
Now, could any of these sublimibal messages be tied into Pavlov's theories of behaviour?

In the case of the masking procedure I mentioned, it can certainly be tied into Pavlovian learning theory. What Pavlov demonstrated with his associative learning, was that a naturally occuring response (like salivating when hungry and smelling food) could be coupled to a stimulus (the ringing bell) by temporal association, so the dogs learned to salivate when they heard the bell, without smelling any food (ie the bell became conditioned). In the same manner, you could condition any stimuli to any response, probably also without the person being aware of it. If you, like in my example, take a person with a spider phobia and show him masked spider pictures followed by pictures of flowers, his nervous system might well learn to couple the fear response triggered by the spider with the flower that is presented at the same time, thus you could probably create a flower-phobia without the person being aware of how this fear of flowers could develop. Luckily, this kind of conditioned emotional responses usually wears off quickly because they need to be repeated over and over again (reinforced) in order to stay permanently. If you use Pavlov's paradigm and give people electric shocks while presenting pictures of flowers (this has been done), they will have a negative emotional response to flowers for a little while, but it disappears because the link between the flower and the negative stimulus (the pain induced by electric shock) is not reinforced in everyday life.

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 9:00 am

Is this big in the US? Here in Sweden it's no market at all for this type of products. There have been some trials with "subliminal learning". and those did not work out. But as I mentioned above, different kinds of manipulations through stimuli that the targeted person is not aware of is possible, although it's not called subliminal messaging any longer.

The market for self-help tools is an extremely big business in the US, @CE. Tapes, seminars, tv shows and books are offered in endless supply. Think of it as a recognition of the need to improve, compromised by a lack of clearly identified traditional cultural resources for that purpose.

frogus · Post by **frogus** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 10:43 am

It strikes me that flashing a big bottle of coke on a screen is extremely primitive. With an arachnophobic(sp?), all that is required to be overcome with fear is seeing a spider. So they can show us a spider and we will be frightened. However, the thing which drives you to buy coke iss sure as hell not seeing it. It is being thirsty. I can see a bottle of coke on the shelf of a shop. Will I drink it? Of course not necessarily, only if I'm thirsty. So what about advertising (billboards etc), don't they make us want to drink coke? I don't think so. They make us want to drink coke rather than drink papsi, say, but they do not make us want to spend our time drinking coke rather than, say, playing Baldur's Gate. So if it is thirst which drives us to drink coke, they cannot expect discrete pictures of coke to make us want to drink it. They must expect it to make us want to drink coke rather than another brand, just like a billboard...so why not just use a billboard? How will zapping the image straight into one's brain make it have a different effect from if it were just posted on a wall?

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 12:25 pm

The way I see it, is that each ad is taylored to an extent where it is merely suggestive, rather then a point blank statement. That way, if they make you think your thristy, while flashing an image of coke, then your more likely to buy a coke to quench your thrist, rather then another brand.

frogus · Post by **frogus** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 1:51 pm

but why do they need to do that subliminally?