Below the radar: stories about subliminal

January 21st, 2010 / 3:00 pm

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about how tapping into the unconscious mind is the next big thing in marketing, thus the emerging term ‘neuromarketing.’ This reminded me about subliminal advertising, which going back to the 1950s has been a controversial and disputed means of persuasion (e.g. subliminal images are shown so briefly that the viewer does not consciously ’see’ them). Every now and then, I stumble upon an article about this area and here are two recent ones:

Subliminal cues do work after all, says study: when subliminal advertising first came to the forefront during the ‘red scare’ 1950s era, people were afraid that the Soviet Union could use such surreptitious techniques to brainwash the public into supporting Communism. Later they were reassured when the results of a much-publicized study turned out to have been falsified. Now, however, with the benefit of MRI ‘brain scan’ technology, there is new evidence that “provided they were reinforced with simultaneous rewards, subliminal advertising could probably influence some of the choices we make.”
Subliminal messages work best when negative: so finds a study conducted by University College London, whose Professor Lavie says that “We have shown that people can perceive the emotional value of subliminal messages and have demonstrated conclusively that people are much more attuned to negative words.” She added: “More controversially, highlighting a competitor’s negative qualities may work on a subliminal level much more effectively than shouting about your own selling points.”

Hopefully this will not give too much succor to those who advocate negative advertising in politics. ‘Effective’ or not in winning elections, I think ‘going negative’ makes our increasingly fragile democratic institutions a loser by increasing cynicism and discouraging citizen participation.

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comments(0) Tags: persuasion, propaganda, psychology