Many people believe that a lot of advertisements contain hidden sexual images, or words that affect our susceptibility to said adverts. This belief is widespread even though there is no evidence for such practices, let alone evidence for the claimed effects. “Embedded” stimuli are difficult to characterize in terms of signal-detection theory or threshold-determination procedures, simply because most of them remain unidentifiable even when the focus of attention is directed to them.

However, using the term subliminal is a fait accompli, and thus deceptive self-appointed experts can claim there is something having an effect, even though it can’t be detected.

The first big Subliminal advertising scam, and the one most often quoted, was James Vicary’s notorious “Eat Popcorn / Drink Coke” scheme. Whereby, in 1956 Vicary claimed that his Subliminal Projection Company had conducted six weeks of studies, involving thousands of unknowing movie-goers, at a cinema in Fort Lee, New Jersey; using a device that secretly flashed the messages “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coke” for a third of a millisecond every five seconds during the film. Vicary claimed almost a 58% increase in sales of popcorn, and an 18% increase in Coke sales¹. The public, instead of asking why the technique was so much more effective for sales of popcorn than for sales of cola, was immediately outraged.

An influential article of the time warned of the serious consequences of such a device, and argued that it should be banned, stating:²

if the device is successful for putting over popcorn, why not politicians or anything else?

If it was possible to affect yearning for popcorn, perhaps the device could be used to:

break into the deepest and most private parts of the human mind and leave all sorts of scratchmarks

The article concluded that the best course of action would be:

to take this invention and everything connected to it and attach it to the center of the next nuclear explosive scheduled for testing.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) undertook an immediate investigation, and ruled that the use of Vicary’s techniques could result in the loss of a license to broadcast. Further, members of the U.S. National Association of Broadcasters were prohibited from using subliminal advertising; a Nevada Judge ruled that subliminal communications were not protected as free speech. And subliminal advertising was outlawed in both Britain and Australia.

Unfortunately, whilst Vicary had claimed he was conducting a scientific study, the research was never actually written up, despite repeated demands from research Psychologists, professional advertisers and the FCC. Consequently, except for a brief summary prepared for an article in a magazine intended for high-school students, the study was never subjected to any proper scientific review.

As a way of responding to critics, Vicary subsequently attempted demonstrations of his machine, and frequently failed to get the machine to work at all, then when he did, no one in the audience felt compelled to comply with the flashed messages. Further, when the machine was finally subjected to a controlled test by an independent research company, no increase in the sales of either popcorn or cola was observed¹.

As it turned out though, in a 1962 interview, Vicary actually admitted that he had made the whole thing up. His company did have the claimed device, but Vicary, in the interview revealed:

Worse than the timing, though, was the fact that we hadn’t done any research, except what was needed for filing for a patent. I had only a minor interest in the company and a small amount of data – too small to be meaningful. And what we had shouldn’t have been used promotionally³.

In 1958, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) also attempted to repeat Vicary’s experiment by subliminally flashing the message “Phone Now” 352 times during a popular Sunday night program called “Close-Up”. No increase in telephone usage was observed during that period, and nobody called the station. When asked to guess what the message said, viewers sent almost 500 letters, but not one contained the correct answer. Although, interestingly, about half of the respondents claimed to have been made hungry or thirsty during the show¹. Apparently they guessed (incorrectly) that the message was aimed at getting them to eat or drink. Another company, Precon Process and Equipment, was formed in 1957 to embed subliminal messages in advertising hoardings and in films, they received a patent for the technique in 1962⁴. The patent was awarded simply because the device could do what was claimed of it (insert subliminal messages) not because the subliminal messages themselves were shown to be effective.

Best selling author and lecturer Wilson Bryan Key popularised the cargo-cult science of subliminal seduction, arguing that the big advertisers and big government are in a conspiracy to control out minds using subliminal implants. According to Key:

Subliminal indoctrination may prove more dangerous than nuclear weapons. The substitution of cultural fantasies for realities on a massive, worldwide scale threatens everyone in this precarious period of human evolution. Present odds appear to favor total devastation⁵.

Professor Key⁶ argued repeatedly that advertisers embed the word ‘sex’ into their advertising copy to obtain enhanced recall and recognition through implicit sexual association. To test this hypothesis, Vokey and Read⁷ produced three sets of slides of holiday experiences: in the first, the word ‘sex‘ was embedded three or four times; in the second, a three-letter nonsense trigram was inserted and in the third, there was nothing embedded. Volunteers examined an equal number of each type of slide before being tested for their ability to remember aspects of the scenes. None of the viewers reported seeing the word ‘sex‘, so the embedding was not noticed. Further, viewers could only see the word ‘sex‘ if it was pointed out to them. Key’s claim was therefore not supported. Slides that had been ‘sex‘ embedded during initial exposure were not better recognized than slides with nonsense syllables or nothing embedded. Additionally, there was no improvement when another test was administered two days later.

Thus, despite the apparent use of subliminal techniques in advertising, there is simply no evidence for effective subliminal persuasion in film or video, and there is no theoretical foundation to expect it.

References:

1. Pratkanis, A.R., ‘The cargo-cult science of subliminal persuasion’, Skeptical Inquirer (1992) 16:3
2. Cousins, N., ‘Smudging the subconscious’, Saturday Review (1957) 40:20
3. Danzig, F., ‘Subliminal advertising – Today it’s just historic flashback for researcher Vicary’, Advertising Age (1962) September 17
4. McIver, T., ‘Backward masking, and other backward thoughts about music’, Skeptical Inquirer (1988) 13:1
5. Key, W. B., ‘The age of manipulation: The con in confidence, the sin in sincere‘ (1989) New York: Henry Holt
6. Key, W. B., ‘Media sexploitation‘ (1977) New York: Signet
7. Vokey, J.R. & J.D. Read, ‘Subliminal messages: Between the devil and media‘, American Psychologist (1985) 40:1231-1239

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

You might also enjoy reading:-

• Subliminal Influence: Introduction
• Subliminal Influence: in Audio recordings
• Change your diet, boost your sex life
• The worst place to seduce people
• Pleasure nerves found by Scientists

Posted by Jonathan in Psychology

No Comments »