 |
|
A GenePoool.com Essay
Subliminals
This one took me by surprise.
I remember in High school, we used to have weekly Wednesday morning meetings which every student was required to attend. Usually the meetings ran along the lines of "Go School!" or "Let's listen to the choir," but occasionally they had guest speakers who were paid to come in and educate us on one matter or another.
One such speaker was brought in to educate us on the dangers of commercials, and specifically, on subliminal advertising. One of the central theses of her speech was certainly accurate; we SHOULD teach our children how to pass an accurate judgement on the claims of T.V. and print advertising. I know my kids could use a dose of this every now and then, and I do take time out to discuss certain commercials with them to try and get them to understand that skepticism is an important tool when assessing the claims of any product they see on television. I don't think it does any good, of course, but I try. After all, for most children the commercial is simply part of the entertainment, but with a toy you can actually own for yourself, and that has an appeal.
After a brief discussion along these lines the guest speaker went on to discuss what Madison Avenue is doing to influence our unconscious decision-making abilities: subliminal advertising.
She began with the most famous example, and the one that I think we've all heard of. As it goes, in 1957 an advertising fellow named James Vicary created a device that would flash the words "Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coke" at regular intervals during a movie, but so quickly that nobody in the theater was aware anything out of the ordinary was taking place. The result, reportedly, was a huge rise in concession sales of both Coke and popcorn.
She followed this with examples of the kind of subliminal advertising that is easier to identify because it doesn't flash briefly and then disappear. She showed us slides of magazine advertisements that had secret erotic images in them. The only one I remember is the glass of alcohol with the reflection of a penis in the ice, but there were a large number of examples for us to ponder.
Quite honestly, my reaction was one of concern, mixed with the belief that this woman was awfully preoccupied with sex. But I had no reason to question the essential basis of her argument, which was, messages received below the conscious level implicitly affect behavior. I had been told this by an authority figure in a school environment. And I already knew the Eat popcorn/Drink Coke experiment, so none of this surprised me all that much.
Shortly after the Vicary experiment the FCC banned subliminal advertising, threatening loss of license to anybody caught using it. Other countries followed suit. There has even been a ruling declaring that subliminals are not protected by free speech. For most people the idea of subliminal advertising is genuine, dangerous, and real.
Let's take a look again at the claims made by my High school guest speaker, starting with Eat popcorn/Drink Coke.
Shortly after James Vicary made his claim he was called upon by the scientific community to produce his machine for a controlled test of his claims. Replication is of course a minimum requirement for any scientist, and while Vicary was no scientist, the only way to verify his assertion was to put it through a second test. But when tests were repeated, the results didn't seem to reflect the claim. For example, in 1958, in an effort to replicate the experiment the Canadian Broadcasting Company flashed "Phone Now" at regular intervals during an evening of programming. Phone usage did not go up at all.
Vicary finally admitted, albeit much too late, that he had no data from the original experiment because there was no data of any use to be had. His experiment was brief, with a far too small sample size, and the purpose of the study, more than anything else, was to boost the sales of a lagging advertising company. Vicary had committed a self-conscious act of bad science, and science had corrected him by being unable to replicate the experiment. But by then, of course, the idea subliminals had entered the mainstream.
As for the penis reflected in the ice cube, let's look back on what we already know about the capability of pattern recognition all of us possess. A multifaceted surface like that of an ice cube is bound to reveal interesting shapes. It doesn't mean the shape was put there on purpose any more than a cloud that vaguely resembles Nixon is intentionally doing an impression.
Let me make one distinction. Subliminals are essentially messages delivered just below the active awareness of the recipient. There have been studies that confirmed that visual subliminal messages can be received and understood even though the reception was done on an unconscious level, provided the message itself is very simple. But there is an enormous gap between receiving the message and having that message affect one's behavior. There is no evidence that a subliminal message can in any way compel us to do anything.
The distinction is lost on many, I think, because the very idea that a piece of information can be imparted without our being aware of it implies a loss of control. And if we do not have control over the information we are receiving, who does? But the subliminal message has no more affect on you than my writing BUY MY BOOK over and over again within this column.
Which brings me to the modern permutation of the subliminal craze.
For much of the time the idea of subliminals has been out there, it's been something we're told we should be afraid of. Now the proverbial worm has turned, and we are informed by a variety of creative marketers that subliminal self-help tapes can make us stop smoking, be more assertive, more creative, whatever.
Nonsense.
First, remember my point about the what the studies of subliminals DO prove. VISUAL messages can be received on a subliminal level. They cannot control behavior, but they can be received. But there's no evidence, not even a shred, that auditory subliminal messages can be picked up on any level at all. Our ears do not work the same way our eyes do, nor does the brain interpret sound the same way it does sight.
A marvelous test of subliminal self-help tapes was conducted by Anthony Pratkanis, Jay Eskenazi, and Anthony Greenwald (1990.) They took two self-help tapes, one for self-esteem, and another for improving memory.
First, they gave their subjects standard psychological tests to get a rough measure of each person's self-esteem and memory skills.
Second, they sent out one tape to each subject. The key to the study is that in half of the cases, the labels on the tapes were switched; that is, for a test subject who received a tape on improving memory, there was a 50% chance that they actually had a tape designed to raise their self-esteem.
The third step was to bring in all of the subjects after having listened to the tapes as instructed. Every one of the subjects who received tapes LABELED self-esteem reported higher self-esteem, and likewise for the memory tapes. When the standard psychological tests were administered a second time, there was no difference. Someone who received a tape labeled "memory" may have thought that their memory was improved, but there was no evidence it actually had been.
So to summarize, are subliminals dangerous? No. There is no evidence to suggest they affect behavior in any way.
Are they helpful? No. Messages masked in the background of classical music tapes simply cannot be heard, much less digested by the unconscious mind.
Was there any reason to worry, on leaving that meeting back in High school, that subliminal advertising was going to turn me into a coerced consumer? No.
But I do think that woman was awfully preoccupied
with sex.
© 2000, Gene Doucette
| |
|