6. Subliminal Perception, Persuasion, and Learning

6.1 Definition of Concepts

Some people have postulated for many years that our human minds sometimes perceive information subliminaly, i.e. below the level of conscious perception, and therefore at a "subliminal" level in our unconscious minds. They postulated further that this subliminally obtained information may later influence our conscious minds -- as they recall information learned subliminally into our unconscious minds.

Three general categories have evolved where this phenomenon may be useful:

Subliminal Perception

Subliminal Persuasion

Subliminal Learning

Subliminal Perception involves a perception of something which we see, which we recognize and store in our unconscious minds without being consciously aware of what has happened.

Subliminal Persuasion involves perceiving graphical or textual information subliminally which persuades us to change our opinions, decisions, and actions in our conscious minds, without realizing the role of this subliminal persuasion. Potential applications include subliminal advertising, where we influence people to buy or use specific products without realizing that we have secretly persuaded them to do so. It also includes changing the opinions of voters to vote for specific candidates, again without realizing that they are responding to hidden promotions and propaganda favoring these specific candidates. It is easy to understand why this has become a controversial issue.

Subliminal Learning involves perceiving information and storing it directly in our memories in our unconscious minds, without processing this information first through our conscious minds. As an example, there are products on the market claiming to assist people to learn a foreign language painlessly, by playing audio tapes to learn vocabulary while sleeping, without the boredom of trying to learn word equivalents in another language consciously.

Both Subliminal Persuasion and Subliminal Learning depend upon the more-fundamental concept of Subliminal Perception in the first stage.

6.2 Historical Background

George Orwell predicted in his novel, "1984", that by 1984 our thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors would be controlled almost entirely by the media.

Vance Packard claimed in a book, "The Hidden Persuaders", in the late 1950's that hidden messages in advertising can influence our minds. This aroused both curiosity and concern, since the concept appeared to plausible, he gave simple examples, and they raised concerns that our general public could be "brain-washed" by the media into buying products we did not really want or need.

The real "breakthrough" was on 12 September 1957, when a market researcher, James M. Vicary, held a press conference in New York City announcing the results of experiments which he had just performed in several movie theaters in New Jersey, which proved the effectiveness of "subliminal persuasion".

You can think of a conventional "movie" as flashing 35-milllimeter photos at a rate of 24 frames per second onto the movie screen, thereby creating the optical illusion of people and objects moving, when the differences from one frame to the next are relatively small. Approximately every 5 seconds in each of several different movies, Vicary had substituted a modified 35-millimeter photo with the words "eat popcorn" and "drink Coca-Cola". But, the text flashed by so fast that no one in the audiences was able to perceive or understand these written messages in their conscious minds. But, the people started getting up from their seats to go to the lobby in order to buy popcorn and Coca-Cola. He claimed that this "subliminal advertising" increased sales of Coca-Cola by 18.1% and sales of popcorn increased by 57.7%.

This caused a public uproar, when the public realized that advertisers could be using hidden methods to make them buy specific products which they did not want or need. There was concern that subliminal perception could be used to pervert their thinking processes. The entire movie ind