Subliminal Perception

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Last Updated on January 11, 2023 by Mike Robinson

Around the end of the 1950s, there was a lot of concern about advertising. People discovered a way to show ads that could change people’s behavior without their realizing it. At that time, a common example was at a movie theater, where the message “Buy popcorn” might be shown while the movie was playing. Even if viewers didn’t know it was there, it would still make them want to buy popcorn. This is known as subliminal perception.

The procedures involved quickly flashing images on the screen at a size, speed, or brightness that was too small to cause conscious awareness. The word “subliminal” comes from two Latin words that mean “below” and “consciousness” (limen). Subliminal perception happens when these unnoticed stimuli seem to affect behavior later on.

There is still a lot of disagreement about whether it’s possible to use subliminal stimuli to persuade people in advertising or if the effects come from the rare times when the stimulus gets through to the conscious mind. So, the first thing to do is come up with a clearer definition of what “subliminal” means.

What is subliminal perception?

You can divide subliminal stimuli into four categories:

Above the level where the five senses can pick it up.
Above what the senses can register but below what the mind can notice.
Above the level of detecting and separating but below the level of identifying
below the level of identification only because of the defensive action.

The first of these definitions would never be expected to have behavior effects, any more than you’d expect a whispered message to influence a listener a block away. Generally speaking, researchers accept the second definition as the best definition of subliminal stimulation. However, some researchers are willing to accept the third definition, and clinical researchers often accept the fourth.

The history of subliminal perception

The problem with the study of subliminal perception was that the mainstream media quickly picked it up. Many of the statements and claims about subliminal perception were careless, outlandish, and strange.

For instance, some people said that the process manipulated people by hiding sexual symbols in TV and magazine ads. Published strange stories said teenagers were being exposed to subliminal stimuli and music recordings that were put there by revolutionaries and terrorists who wanted to make them act aggressively.

Some fundamentalist groups say that devil worshippers are using these same vehicles to hurt people’s morals and get more people to join their cults. There was never any proof that these ideas were true. However, they made the study of subliminal perception controversial for decades by making it seem related to fringe groups, weird social activities, and bad science.

The Mere Exposure Effect

The study of subliminal perception has become more legitimate in recent years thanks to several lines of research. Robert J. Oxford calls this effect the “mere exposure effect.” It is the main focus of this new research. This effect shows that repeated exposure to a stimulus, even if it isn’t noticed or paid attention to, can make a person feel good about that stimulus when they see it again.

According to research, the “Mere Exposure Effect“ is a strong and reliable phenomenon. It shows that people tend to like things they have seen before, whether they are drawings, photos, nonsense words, or even other people’s social behaviors. One important thing about these results is that the process is very simple. People don’t have to be aware that they have seen the stimulus or be able to remember when they have seen it before. In fact, a number of studies suggest that subliminal stimuli make the emotional effect of simple exposure even stronger.

The effects of subliminal perception

Most of the time, the effects of subliminal stimulation are related to emotions and things that affect emotions. So, functional MRIs and other methods of mental imaging have shown that our brains react differently to the emotions shown on people’s faces even when we are not aware of or paying attention to them. Also, smells that we are not aware of can affect how we choose to interact with other people. This helps explain why some people can walk into a room and feel their mood change immediately, even though they don’t know why. They could be reacting to emotional cues that aren’t obvious to them.

Clinical psychologists have added to their research by looking at another way in which emotional factors affect how we perceive things that aren’t directly in front of us. In the example of perceptual defense, this is the case. An example are experiments where people look at meaningless words or pictures for a short time. Then they are asked to name them. If some of the stimuli had been linked to painful electric shocks in the past, you might expect them to cause some anxiety now.

Measuring subliminal perception

In general, negative emotional stimuli are easier to miss than neutral ones. It’s as if the observers are trying to protect themselves from the painful memories that such stimuli bring up. Still, it is possible to show that someone has seen something without being aware of it. You accomplish this by using psychological measures of anxiety, such as the galvanic skin response. This device records the person’s negative emotion or state in response to the stimuli, even if the observer is unaware.

The effects of subliminal priming

Cognitive psychologists are interested in and curious about subliminal perception. Their particular interest is due to a phenomenon called priming. Priming happens when a stimulus makes it easier to notice a later stimulus related to it in some way. For example, in a priming study about word recognition, the prime word comes first, and then the target word comes after. For example, we could quickly say the word “nurse.” Then follow with an unrelated word like “carrot” or a word that has something to do with it, like “doctor.” Most of the time, priming happens when the person responds faster to the related word than to the neutral word.

Researchers believe that the prime word activated a mental process related to the first stimulus. This made it easier for the brain to process the next stimulus. The word “priming” comes from the fact that you had to “prime” older water pumps before use. This happens by pouring some water into the chamber of the pump. Then you can draw more water up from the well.

One interesting thing about priming is that the stimulus that causes it doesn’t have to be conscious. Instead, it can be completely unconscious or “subliminal.” This kind of research has made it clear that subliminal perception may trigger associations that help us read quickly and understand what we read. So, we subconsciously take in information from the words that are still ahead of us on the page.

We subconsciously take in this information, making recognizing these words and ideas easier when we see them later in the text as our eyes move down the page. This is subliminal priming. This suggests that subliminal perception is not a rare psychological quirk and may be a common and important part of how we take in information from our environment.

Example of subliminal priming

Priming through subliminal perception has led to some interesting new research. For example, there is evidence that stimuli we are unaware of can change our mood, approach, or self-confidence. This can affect how well we do on complex cognitive tasks. A teacher gave a striking example of this effect by using words like “smart,” “brilliant,” “bright,” “talented,” “sharp,” “clever,” “brainy,” “gifted,” “educated,” “genius,” and “learned” when she talked to her students.

Then, the students took their regular midterm tests for their statistics or psychology classes. Students exposed to these subliminal stimuli instead of neutral ones did better on their final exams. Also, these effects didn’t seem to go away quickly. Instead, they seemed to last for a long time.

However, the effects of priming with intelligence-related words were not the equivalent of some pep talk that builds confidence because the benefits were obtained only if the students were completely unaware of their exposure to these stimuli and their purpose. This suggests that there may be something unique about the processing of subliminal stimuli that is distinct from the processing of stimuli in conscious awareness.