Scientific Research into Subliminal Messaging

The conscious mind is largely a complex filter processing a very select array of information. Practitioners of subliminal messaging exploit loopholes in conscious perception, to reach the creative and flexible unconscious mind.

In this sense, subliminal messages are the Trojan horses of the world of Psychology. They are designed to subvert the workings of the logical, critical conscious mind. Their goal is to reach the unconscious mind undetected. Here resides the majority of cognitive functioning. It is here where, through repetition, NLP supports conscious decision. At first glance it sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it? Well almost. The famed ‘subliminal’ author, Leonard Mlodinow used to write for Star Trek!

Over the past 30 years, respectable research has trickled in to create a rising tide of empirical evidence which strongly supports the use of subliminal messaging. This evidence now lies before us, fitting together like pieces in a puzzle, to tell an amazing story.

Out of the Paranormal

The field of subliminal messaging has come a long way since the early 1970’s. When Dr. John Bargh (2006, 2012) set out, his colleagues regarded his work as something akin to paranormal investigation. When James Vicary confessed that he had cooked the data in the seminal “Drink Cola” experiment, it was too easy to lay the idea of the subliminal aside. For most, this was the last word on the subject.

There was a handful of studies on the subject during the 1980s that showed subliminal messaging had the potential to help with smoking cessation (Palmatier & Bornstein, 1980), and even treat Schizophrenia (Kaplan, Thornton & Silverman, 1985). While this was interesting, it wasn’t an effective argument in the face of the infamous Placebo Effect.

Sugar Pills and White Noise

The Placebo Effect remains the most cited reason as to why subliminal messaging does not exist. (Considering that the same criticism is levelled at most of Western Medicine, the subliminal field is in good company here.) The Placebo effect is that improvement in the condition which occurs even though the individual is not receiving treatment – but thinks they are! When testing out chemical medicine, one group of test subjects receive sugar pills. In subliminal research, test subjects receive garbled meaningless nonsense and white noise. Poor control group. What makes the waters a little muddier in this case is that the usual goal of self-help messages is to improve subjective experience. The Placebo Effect is especially good at this. To date, the Placebo Effect remains the most curious and misunderstood medical phenomena (Brooks, 2009). Most alternative medicines continue to trade on the Placebo Effect, regardless of any empirical support for their use.

But subliminal messaging refused to be put into this category and research forged on. By the 1990s, Hudesman, Page and Rautiainen showed that subliminal stimulation enhanced real Maths proficiency (1992). Subsequent research demonstrated that subliminal messaging creates significant change at a very deep levels of the psyche (Talbot, Duberstein & Scott, 1991; Malik, Krasney, Aldworth & Ladd, 1996). The most salient feature to remember about these pieces of research was that that they clearly showed subliminal messaging working beyond the Placebo Effect.

This was really exciting times for the field, but to make a strong case for the use of this unseen and unfelt phenomenon, research had to go one better. The greatest thinkers who lent time to the study of the unconscious: Wundt, Carpenter, Pierce, Jung, Jastrow, James (and let us not forget ancient Greece here) gave claim to the existence of the subliminal perception. They hinted to its potential and explained why subliminal messaging might work (Mlodinow, 2012).

Due to its unseen nature, it was not good enough to explain that it worked, or why – science needed to show how it worked. The process of subliminal communication needed to be explored, observed and measured.

Scanning… Scanning…

This opportunity came when subliminal researchers gained access to MRI technology. Researchers were able to show that subliminal messages were being routed to the brain stem. This is the reptilian region of the brain where we know unconscious thought is processed (Kouider Dehaene, Jobert & Le Bihan, 2007; Dupoux, de Gardelle & Kouider, 2008). What’s more, subsequent research suggested that this unconscious processing is semantic in nature, that is to say, the unconscious mind processes the subliminally served up thoughts as ‘words’ (Van den Bussche, Notebaert & Reynvoet, 2009; Davis, Kim & Barbaro, 2010).

Good Trojan Horses

Subliminal research has evolved out of the realm of paranormal investigation. No longer does research ask whether subliminal research exists, but how best to tap into its potential. Research in May and June of this year showed the dynamic relationship between subliminal messages and personality. This means that not only does subliminal messaging work; research can demonstrate it working neurologically and that the process of subliminal programming has a psychological interaction (Paul, Pope, Fennell & Mendl, 2012; Bustin, Quoidbach, Hansenne & Capa, 2012).

The difficulty in creating a subliminal self help programme is to work within the confines of what it can achieve, and how it can reasonably influence personality and perception. Subliminal programming cannot change the world around you; help you win the lottery, alter your genetic make-up or push buttons in your head which don’t exist. Subliminal messaging however can defy logical conscious mind to prime behaviours which redirect ideas of the world, self-perception, to hone natural talents.

And the best news of all is that we’ll carry on researching.

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About the Author: Ryan produces subliminal NLP for Subliminal Today. You can keep up to date on the amazing story of subliminal research by liking facebook.com/subliminaltoday

References

Bargh, J.A. (2012). Priming Effects Replicate Just Fine, Thanks In response to a ScienceNews article on priming effects in social psychology. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-natural-unconscious/201205/priming-effects-replicate-just-fine-thanks

Brooks. M. (2009). 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of Our Time. New York: Random House.

Bustin, G,M., Quoidbach, J., Hansenne, M., Capa, R.L,. (2012). Personality modulation of (un)conscious processing: Novelty Seeking and performance following supraliminal and subliminal reward cues. Conscious Cogition, 21(2), 947-52.

Davis, C., Kim, J., & Barbaro, A. (2010). Masked speech priming: neighborhood size matters. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 127(4), 2110-2113.

Dupoux, E., de Gardelle, V., & Kouider, S. (2008) Subliminal speech perception and auditory streaming. Cognition, 109(2), 267-273.

Hudesman J., Page, W., & Rautiainen, J. (1992). Use of subliminal stimulation to enhance learning mathematics. Perceptual & Motor Skills. 6, 74, 1219-1224.

Kaplan, R., Thornton, P., & Silverman, L. (1985). Further data on the effects of subliminal symbiotic stimulation on schizophrenics. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 173(11), 658-666.

Kouider, S., Dehaene, S., Jobert, A., & Le Bihan, D. (2007) Cerebral Bases of Subliminal and Supraliminal Priming during Reading. Cerebral Cortex, 17, 2019 – 2029.

Malik R., Krasney M.S., Aldworth, B., & Ladd H.W. (1996). Effects of subliminal symbiotic stimuli on anxiety reduction. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 6, 771-784.

Mlodinow, L. (2012). Subliminal – The Revolution of the New Unconscious and what it teaches us about ourselves. London: Penguin.

Palmatier, J.R., Bornstein, P.H. (1980) Effects of subliminal stimulation of symbiotic merging fantasies on behavioral treatment of smokers. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 168, 12, 715-720.

Paul, E.S., Pope, S.A., Fennell, J.G., Mendl, M.T. (2012) Social anxiety modulates subliminal affective priming. Retrieved from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0037011#abstrac0

Talbot, N.L., Duberstein, P.R., & Scott, P. (1991). Subliminal psychodynamic activation, food consumption, and self-confidence. Journal Clinical Psychology, 11, 47, 813-823.

Van den Bussche, E., Notebaert, K., & Reynvoet, B. (2009). Masked primes can be genuinely semantically processed: a picture prime study. Journey of Experimental Psychology, 56(5), 295-300.

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