SUBLIMINAL PERSUASION EXAMPLE TV

Taken together, the aforementioned studies show that situational factors can increase people’s sensitivity to subliminal advertisement such that subliminal messages are more effective on those who are currently craving a particular product when compared to those who are not. Thus, in addition to a direct effect of deprivation (e.g., thirst, fatigue), subliminal conditioning can motivate individuals as if they were actually deprived. The authors found that non-thirsty individuals, for whom the concept of drinking had been subliminally paired with positive words, consumed more water than did individuals in the neutral conditioning condition. (2011) used a subliminal evaluative conditioning method in which they paired consumer behavior with positive traits (e.g., drinking + good) below conscious awareness. (2009) found that participants performing a computer game that subliminally primed the pill brand, “dextrose” consumed more pills of the primed brand, but only when participants were tired. (2006) demonstrated that the brand name “Lipton Ice” presented subliminally could increase participants’ intention to drink this specific brand, but only when participants were thirsty (e.g., when given salty food before exposure to the prime). More recently, however, experimental studies have shown that subliminal priming can meaningfully influence consumer behavior, provided that brand or product being primed is relevant to the consumer’s goals and needs. However, meta-analytic approaches indicate that the effect sizes of such subliminal persuasion attempts are weak (around r = 0.06 see Trappey, 1996). adults believe that they are continuously being assaulted with subliminal messages ( Haberstroh, 1994).īut can one, in light of the current scientific evidence, draw any conclusions regarding the effectiveness of subliminal persuasion techniques? Many early studies suggest that subliminal messages can indeed affect people’s choices ( Caccavale et al., 1982 Kilbourne et al., 1985 Gable et al., 1987).

About 75% of Americans have heard of subliminal messages ( Rogers and Smith, 1993) and a staggering 62% of all U.S.

SUBLIMINAL PERSUASION EXAMPLE TV

Similarly, McDonalds was accused of flashing the company slogan “I’m lovin’ it,” together with a hamburger in a single frame during a popular TV cooking show.

The backlash was tremendous, leading the ad to be taken down. For example, in 2000, a Republican support group ran an advertisement, which briefly highlighted the word “rats” in “Democrats,” in what appeared to be a subliminal persuasion attempt. Although Vicary later admitted to fabricating the data, belief in the power of subliminal persuasion persists. In 1957, James Vicary, a market researcher from New Jersey, claimed that flashing messages encouraging popcorn eating and drinking Coca-Cola raised vendor sales.

These findings highlight the necessity of taking personality into account in non-conscious persuasion research.Ĭan people’s choices be affected subliminally? Since the 1950s, there have been persistent myths about the efficacy of persuading others without their knowledge. Going beyond previous research showing that situational factors (e.g., thirst, fatigue…) can increase people’s sensitivity to subliminal advertisement, our results suggest that some dispositional factors could have the same potentiating effect. However, this effect was twice as strong for participants high in sensation seeking and did not occur for participants low in sensation seeking. Results revealed that being exposed to Red Bull lead on average to small increases in participants’ preferences for the primed brand. Participants with different levels of sensation seeking were presented subliminally with the words Red Bull or Lde Ublr. This study assessed whether subliminal priming of a brand name of a drink can affect people’s choices for the primed brand, and whether this effect is moderated by personality traits. 3Department of Psychology: Cognition and Behavior, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.2Department of Psychology, University of Texas, El Paso, TX, USA.1Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.Jones 2 Michel Hansenne 3 Jordi Quoidbach 1

Subliminal persuasion example