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What Are Subliminal Messages & How Do They Work

By Michael McGrath

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 19Jan2009 Word count: 693 Viewed: 214 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Subliminal messages are commands that are embedded, or hidden, in other communication mediums. They are designed to pass ordinary awareness of perception i.e. the conscious mind. They are created in a way that should arouse no response from the conscious mind but should immediately grab the attention of the subconscious.

Subliminal messages can be visual or auditory in nature and are designed to stimulate a response from the subconscious mind so that it affects the thinking processes and decisions that we make consciously. It is thought that they can have either a negative or positive influence on the decisions of the person in contact with them and are believed to heavily influence thoughts, beliefs, feelings and most importantly actions!

The term subliminal derives from Latin where sub means beneath and limen means threshold. So, subliminal messages are suggestions that are received below the level of threshold.

They came to the attention of the general public in the middle of the last century. Back in 1957 a researcher named James Vicary conducted a highly controversial experiment in a local movie theater. Vicary flashed the words popcorn and coca cola on the screen for a few milliseconds and claimed the sales of both increased significantly. This experiment was debated over for many years and caused much disagreement within the scientific community.

The resulting press attention led to the banning of subliminal messages by several countries, including the USA and UK. However, Vicary later admitted that he falsified the data and results from the experiment. This brought the effectiveness of them into question something that has been aggravated because the Vicary experiment has never been duplicated successfully by anyone else. In fact, many people believe Vicary did not even carry out the experiment at all!

This has led many scientists to conclude that they have no effect on our decisions at all and in fact do not even reach any level of consciousness so are not perceived at any level.

However, a few recent studies, such as those carried out at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience University College London by Bahador Bahrami, have found startling and contradictory evidence about the effectiveness of subliminal messages on perception!

In fact there is a growing number of studies, and mounting evidence, to suggest that they do affect us at a deep level of mind.

In 1958 a book by Wilson Bryan Key called Subliminal Seduction made claims that subliminal techniques were widely used in advertising. If you take a look at YouTube you will clearly see many examples of subliminal messages still being widely used in advertising today!

Although in advertising visual images are carefully, and skillfully, weaved into the fabric of a picture or moving scene, when used for self improvement they mostly come in the form of auditory sequences. The suggestions are recorded at an audible (you can hear it) volume but become imperceptible when another track, such as music or ocean waves, is added to the recording. This is known as masking.

In some cases they are added to the recording so that one message enters one ear and another message enters the other ear. This is known as stereo confusion and is also a very popular technique in many hypnosis recordings (although not subliminal in nature).

On occasions they are also presented backwards which is known as back-masking. However this technique is controversial and even many devout advocates of subliminal technology doubt its effectiveness. Though there are those that believe back-masking is the most effective form of subliminal messages because it completely removes any input from the conscious mind. While the conscious mind is listening to the music or sounds on the track the subconscious is free to decode the backward suggestions.

I have personally found them to be very effective and although early experimentation indicates that they are not effective the latest studies, using sophisticated equipment, show otherwise.

However, as with everything we are told in life, there is only really one way to get a clear view of whether subliminal messages are effective and that is through experience! The only way you will know for sure is if you try them.

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