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In the 1950s, American market researcher James Vicary claimed to have revolutionized the world of advertising with a new process for inserting subliminal messages into movies. For a split second, imperceptible to the audience, the words “Eat Popcorn!” and “Drink Cola!” flickered across the screen. Audiences then flocked to the theater as if by remote control; Coca-Cola sales increased by 18 percent and popcorn sales by as much as 58 percent.
Manipulation of the masses
An outcry went around the world at the time. Was advertising allowed to do this? Could people be turned into mindless consumer machines? And what if politicians took advantage of such a process? Scientists debated their heads. In the end, subliminal advertising was banned in several countries.
The story, James Vicary later admitted, was fictional. The special projector did exist, but the subliminal messages had no measurable effect. The myth has persisted to this day. Scientists still debate whether such a secret influence is possible. And now studies suggest that it might actually work.
The idea of using subliminal advertising to influence people dates back more than a hundred years. But it was not until after the Second World War that the first attempts were made to study the effects of such “subliminal” messages. James Vicary’s “Eat-Popcorn-Drink-Coke” study was not the only one: According to the London Sunday Times, similar experiments have been conducted in the United Kingdom. Allegedly, intercut images were used to increase sales of an ice cream brand.
Various trials put the myth to the test
Vicary’s experiment has been repeated many times in the scientific community, but no comparable effect has ever been observed. In 2001, students at the University of Mainz started an experiment: they showed their fellow students car and beer commercials with images of accidents cut into them.
They then asked their classmates if they would still drive after a few glasses of beer. Their theory: Fellow students who had seen the superimposed accident images would be more likely to reject drinking and driving than those who had not seen the images. But again, there was no measurable effect.
Nevertheless, the myth that people were influenced by subliminal advertising persisted. Television networks from Canada to Russia tried to influence their audiences with secret messages. A gambling machine manufacturer came under fire for its machines displaying a subliminal winning combination. In the U.S., police tried to persuade a wanted murderer to turn himself in with a subliminal appeal on television. Even the CIA has studied the effects of subliminal messages, again without success.
Is there any truth to common myths about subliminal manipulation?
The Dutch psychologist Johan Karremans from the University of Nijwegen showed in an experiment how subliminally incised messages can have an effect. He presented his test subjects with short spots in which they were asked to count how often the letter B appeared. He had incorporated subliminal messages into half of the spots: They contained the name of an iced tea manufacturer. The control group only saw a meaningless sequence of letters.
However, the subliminal message was only part of the experiment. Both groups were split again: Some were given salted crackers beforehand, others were not. Afterwards, all subjects were given something to drink, and they could choose between the brand of iced tea displayed and plain mineral water.
A surprising effect was observed: The group that had previously eaten crackers, i.e., was already thirsty during the experiment and had also seen the advertisement, actually chose iced tea eighty percent of the time. All others chose iced tea and mineral water equally.
Subliminal manipulation requires a level of attention and awareness
Karreman’s experiment shows the following: Subliminal messages are effective when attention to the topic has been stimulated beforehand. The subjects, who were already thirsty, had obviously developed an increased attention to drinks, so that the
iced tea ad – even though it was not consciously perceived – was able to work.
This effect is called “priming” in communication science. When our brain is primed for a certain fact, we perceive everything related to it more strongly. In this way, even subliminal messages can leave traces in our memory for milliseconds.
The fact that our brains do indeed perceive subliminal messages is also supported by neuroscience. Using brain scans, researchers have been able to prove that even the smallest stimuli trigger reactions in our minds – as long as our attention is present and our brains are not occupied with something else.
British neuroscientist Bahador Bahrami, for example, has shown that even images that flash across our retinas for milliseconds trigger responses in the primary visual cortex. This is a part of the cerebral cortex responsible for our visual perception. Although his test subjects thought they had seen nothing, his magnetic resonance imaging showed a response in the brain.
And what does all this teach us?
So are we becoming mindless buying machines after all? Bahador Bahrami thinks this is quite likely. Psychologist Johan Karremans, who was responsible for the iced tea experiment, also suggests further research – just to be on the safe side. Other researchers argue that the subliminal messages could never trigger an action – at most reinforce an existing intention. Without a certain preset or attention to the topic, the images ultimately remained ineffective.
