Do Subliminal Messages Work? 🧠
A Deep Dive into the Mysterious World of Subliminal Influence (6 min read)
TLDR Summary:
James Vicary's 1957 study claimed subliminal messages influenced behavior, creating public fascination.
Brain regions like the primary visual cortex and amygdala may be involved in unconscious processing.
Vicary later admitted to fabricating his study results, casting doubt on subliminal message effectiveness.
Research has largely debunked the idea that subliminal messages have a powerful, lasting impact.
Despite lack of evidence, subliminal messages remain pervasive in popular culture.
Vicary's study reminds us to critically examine extraordinary claims and seek scientific validation.
Welcome Back!
From the moment James Vicary announced his notorious study in 1957, the concept of subliminal messages captured the public's imagination.
People were intrigued and, at the same time, fearful of the idea that hidden cues could influence their behavior without their awareness.
From single frames in movies to self-help gurus hyping up their effectiveness, subliminal messages are touted as a way to influence your subconscious mind, but do they really work?
To answer this question we need to look at the brain, how it processes information, and of course, Neuroscience research, let’s dive in!
James Vicary's Subliminal Experiment
James Vicary, a market researcher, sparked a media frenzy and public fascination with the concept of subliminal messages when he announced the results of his groundbreaking study in 1957.
His experiment, conducted in a movie theater in Fort Lee, New Jersey, claimed to demonstrate the power of subliminal messages in influencing consumer behavior.
Vicary reported that by flashing the phrases "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Eat popcorn" for a mere 1/3000th of a second during a movie, sales of Coca-Cola increased by 18.1% and popcorn sales by 57.5%.
Naturally, Vicary's findings were quickly picked up by the press and garnered widespread attention.
The idea that unseen messages could manipulate the minds of unsuspecting individuals both captivated and alarmed the public.
It also raised concerns about the potential for abuse in advertising, political campaigns, and other forms of communication.
The concept even infiltrated popular culture, with countless books, movies, and conspiracy theories featuring subliminal messages as plot devices.
The Brain Behind the Scenes
So, is there any Neuroscience behind these claims?
If subliminal messages do have any effect, they likely operate through the activation of brain regions associated with unconscious processing.
One candidate is the primary visual cortex, which processes visual information before it reaches conscious awareness.
Blindsight
This is a rare condition that occurs in individuals who have damage to the primary visual cortex (V1), typically due to a stroke or brain injury.
These individuals are unable to consciously perceive visual stimuli in certain areas of their visual field but are still able to respond to these stimuli in some ways.
For example, a person with blindsight might be able to accurately guess the location, shape, or movement of an object in their blind field without consciously seeing it.
This suggests that visual information is processed and influences behavior in ways that can bypass conscious awareness.
The Amygdala
This region is involved in emotional processing, and could also play a role in processing subliminal emotional cues.
For example, researchers have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activity while people are exposed to emotional facial expressions, both consciously and subliminally.
During this study, participants were shown images of fearful and happy faces, some of which were presented briefly (for 33 milliseconds) and then masked by a neutral face, making them subliminal.
Participants were not consciously aware of the brief emotional faces, but their amygdalae still responded to the emotional content of these faces.
The results showed that the amygdala was activated in response to both consciously perceived and subliminal emotional facial expressions.
This finding suggests that the amygdala plays a role in processing emotional cues even when they are not consciously perceived.
The Fall of James Vicary
However, the controversy surrounding Vicary's study took a dramatic turn in 1962 when he admitted that he had fabricated the results of his initial “study”.
He confessed that the study was a marketing ploy to boost his struggling consulting business.
This revelation cast serious doubts on the legitimacy of his claims and the existence of subliminal advertising effects.
Many researchers have since attempted to replicate Vicary's findings, but the results have been inconsistent and weak at best.
In the wake of Vicary's admission, the scientific community grew increasingly skeptical of subliminal messaging.
The Science of Subliminal Messages
In the decades that followed this confession, researchers have conducted numerous experiments to investigate the potential effects of subliminal stimuli on behavior.
These experiments have largely debunked the idea that subliminal messages have a powerful and lasting impact on behavior.
Occasionally, researchers have reported small, short-lived effects.
For example, a 1990 study led by Anthony Greenwald found that subliminal self-help tapes could slightly improve participants' self-esteem.
However, many other well-controlled studies have failed to replicate such findings.
Finally, in a comprehensive review published in 2016, Daniel Simons and colleagues concluded that there is little evidence supporting the effectiveness of subliminal messages in consistently influencing behavior in a meaningful way.
Today, the consensus among researchers is that while subliminal stimuli might have some minor, short-lived effects, their overall influence on behavior is negligible.
Real-world Examples and Stories
Despite the lack of robust scientific evidence supporting the effectiveness of subliminal messages, this idea continues to be pervasive in popular culture.
One famous example is the 1978 movie "Superman," in which a single frame of a spinning Coca-Cola bottle was allegedly inserted into the film.
Though there's no evidence that this subliminal message influenced moviegoers' behavior, the story became a legend.
The Lesson
Despite the controversy and subsequent debunking of Vicary's study, the concept of subliminal messages remains a staple in popular culture and conspiracy theories.
This is one of the very reasons I write this blog so that you can start to build the muscle of scientific skepticism and debunk some of these kinds of ideas yourself.
Extraordinary claims like the ones James Vicary spouted should always be scientifically validated before being taken as fact!
I hope today’s blog and last week’s blog help you strengthen this muscle.
Do you have a myth you'd like me to bust next? Or a popular idea you’d like the science behind?
Drop a comment below, or reply to this email and I’ll check into it!
And as always, until next time… Live Heroically 🧠
Supporting Research/Articles:
Vicary, J. (1957). The story that started it all – James Vicary's study claimed that subliminal messages increased sales of Coca-Cola and popcorn during a movie. This study was later admitted to be fabricated, but it sparked interest in the topic of subliminal messages.
Note: The original study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal, so there is no formal citation available.
Greenwald, A. G., Spangenberg, E. R., Pratkanis, A. R., & Eskenazi, J. (1991). Double-blind tests of subliminal self-help audiotapes. Psychological Science, 2(2), 119-122. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1991.tb00112.x
Simons, D. J., Shoda, Y., & Lindsay, D. S. (2016). Constraints on the influence of subliminal perception. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(5), 664-671.
Naccache, L., Gaillard, R., Adam, C., Hasboun, D., Clémenceau, S., Baulac, M., ... & Dehaene, S. (2005). A direct intracranial record of emotions evoked by subliminal words. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(21), 7713-7717. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0500542102
Pessoa, L., & Adolphs, R. (2010). Emotion processing and the amygdala: from a 'low road' to 'many roads' of evaluating biological significance. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(11), 773-783. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2920
Kouider, S., & Dehaene, S. (2007). Levels of processing during non-conscious perception: A critical review of visual masking. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1481), 857-875. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2093
Epley, N., Savitsky, K., & Kachelski, R. A. (1999). What every skeptic should know about subliminal persuasion. Skeptical Inquirer, 23(5), 40-45.
This article is from a magazine, not a peer-reviewed journal, but it provides a useful overview of the skepticism surrounding subliminal persuasion.
Pratkanis, A. R. (1992). The cargo-cult science of subliminal persuasion. Skeptical Inquirer, 16(3), 260-272.
This article is also from a magazine, not a peer-reviewed journal, but it offers an insightful analysis of the flaws in the research on subliminal persuasion.
Moore, T. E. (1982). Subliminal advertising: What you see is what you get. Journal of Marketing, 46(2), 38-47.
Merikle, P. M., & Skanes, H. E. (1992). Subliminal self-help audiotapes: A search for placebo effects. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(5), 772-776. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.77.5.772
Dijksterhuis, A., Bos, M. W., Nordgren, L. F., & van Baaren, R. B. (2006). On making the right choice: The deliberation-without-attention effect. Science, 311(5763), 1005-1007. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1121629
Lovibond, P. F., & Shanks, D. R. (2002). The role of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning: Empirical evidence and theoretical implications. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 28(1), 3-26. https://doi.org/10.1037/0097-7403.28.1.3
Marcel, A. J. (1983). Conscious and unconscious perception: Experiments on visual masking and word recognition. Cognitive Psychology, 15(2), 197-237. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(83)90009-9
Whalen, P. J., Rauch, S. L., Etcoff, N. L., McInerney, S. C., Lee, M. B., & Jenike, M. A. (1998). Masked presentations of emotional facial expressions modulate amygdala activity without explicit knowledge. The Journal of Neuroscience, 18(1), 411-418. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.18-01-00411.1998