Subliminal Messages Discussed

Subliminal Messages

Something that is embedded into something else is considered to be subliminal. It is something designed to speak to the unconscious mind while looking at something else consciously. This method has often been used in advertising and sales and is still up for debate whether or not it actually works.

Researcher James Vicary conducted experiments with subliminal advertising during a movie. As the movie played he would flash very quickly, messages that encouraged the patrons to buy popcorn and drinks. He claimed that during that movie sales, in fact, did rise over normal sales for popcorn and drinks during a movie. This would suggest that subliminal messages truly do work and a Subliminal Projection Company was opened.

The idea here is that messages flashed quickly, so quickly that your conscious mind doesn’t even see them, will encourage you to do the thing that is being asked of you in the message. Such as in the example above, having popcorn and pop suggested several times over seemed to have encouraged more people to purchase more of those items. This is something that has caused much controversy from those that firmly oppose the validity of the practice and those that claim that it works. The claim that Vicary’s experiment worked caused a lot of opposition from the general public and the practice of subliminal advertising was banned in 1958 in America and elsewhere.