Subliminal perception

Deceiving Messages

When we think about subliminal perception we usually think of a big publicity stunt for a company. What many people don’t know is that subliminal perception can really be effective. Any person might say, “Naw, I can’t fall for that I’m not stupid enough to fall into their trap.” For most other cases subliminal perception will attack a person in their sub-conscious state of mind. In one form or anther, subliminal perception takes many forms. It could be presented in an audio, visual, and in the most likely places we don’t tend to find subliminal perception.

What is subliminal perception? Messages, that are either visual or audio, that are below a persons perceptible threshold. The messages that the brain would be receiving would be ones that the conscious mind would not notice at first. It would take the person to view or hear the same message over and over again before it being revealed to the conscious mind. With some people the messages are loud and clear the first time the message is sent to them.

The first time any type of subliminal message was seen was reported in the late 1950’s. This happened in a New Jersey movie theater. During the showing of a movie the theater flashed in one third of a millisecond, “Eat popcorn and Drink Coke”(Eskenazi, Greenwald, Pratkins 252). For that millisecond the audience in the theater was effected. Sales of popcorn and coke increased significantly. This sparked up controversy in the television and radio community. All major television and radio stations banned subliminal advertising. Then it was later found out that this was all just a publicity stunt to promote the theater.

Today’s subliminal messaging is now as obvious as flashing words on a screen. One must observe closely to what the true hidden meaning of the advertisement is. Many times people can not find anything subliminal about an advertisement at all. As the old saying says, “Sex sells,” it really does sell. Most modern day marketing is focusing on sex.

In a way all advertisements have some way of delivering a secret message. If one thinks about it the logos on the clothes we wear have some kind of secret message. May it be noticeable the first time or not, there is something hidden. When one ...

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...t of the time people will not even notice these messages. Some people may have never heard of Queen’s message in his song. One thing for sure is that we should always be aware of what messages we are receiving and what are their intentions. We should always be aware not to fall in the trap of subliminal perception. If we do we have fallen into our subconscious threshold.

Works Cited

Bargh, John A. “The Most Powerful Manipulative Messages are Hiding in Plain Sight”. Chronicle of Higher Education. B6(1999)45:21

Mejia, Lorenzo. Personal Interview. 11 Mar. 2002

Pratkanis, Anthony R., Jay Eskenazi, and Anthony G. Greenwald. "What You Expect is What You Believe but Not Necessarily What You Get: a Test of the Effectiveness of Subliminal Self-Help Audiotapes." Basic and Applied Social Psychology 15.3 (1994): 251-276.

Swensen. Commercial. Fox. KTLA. 12 Apr. 2000

Vaidyanathan, Rajiu. Subliminal Advertising. 14 Mar. 2002 <http://sbe.d.umn.edu/subliminal/content.html>

Welsh, Nick. “Angry Poodle Barbeque: Dog at the Edge of Town.” The Santa Barbra Independent. 21 Sept. 2000

William D. Wells, ed. Measuring Advertising Effectiveness. N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997.