Dieser Beitrag ist auch verfügbar auf:
Deutsch
Can advertising influence us without us noticing? For a long time, this assumption was considered a myth. But studies show that it could actually work. Can the industry manipulate us in such a way that we become mindless buying machines?
In the 1950s, the American James Vicary claimed to have revolutionized the world of advertising with a new process: he had inserted subliminal advertising messages into movies. For a fraction of a second, not consciously perceptible to the audience, the lettering “Eat Popcorn!” and “Drink Cola!” flickered across the screen. The spectators then ran to the cinema as if by remote control; sales of Coca-Cola have risen by 18 percent, and popcorn sales by as much as 58 percent.
Manipulation of the masses
An outcry of indignation went around the world at the time. Was advertising allowed to do such a thing? Could people be turned into mindless consumer machines? And what if politicians were to take advantage of such a procedure? Scientists discussed their heads hotly. Finally, subliminal advertising was banned in several countries.
The story – James Vicary later admitted – was fictitious. The special projector had indeed existed, but the subliminal advertising messages had had no measurable effect. The myth has remained to this day. Scientists are still discussing whether such a secret influence is not possible after all. And now studies suggest that it could actually work.
The idea of influencing people with subliminal advertising came up over a hundred years ago. But it was not until after the Second World War that the first attempts were made to investigate the effect of such so-called “subliminal” messages. James Vicary’s “Eat-Popcorn-Drink-Coke” study was not the only one: According to the London Sunday Times, similar experiments were carried out in the UK. Allegedly, the sales of an ice cream brand could be increased here due to cropped images.
Trials in Germany
Vicary’s experiment has been repeated umpteen times in science – without ever being able to observe a comparable effect. In 2001, students at the University of Mainz started an experiment: they showed their fellow students commercials for cars and beer brands with images of accidents cut into them. Afterwards, the fellow students were asked to indicate whether they would still drive a car after a few glasses of beer. Their theory: The fellow students who had seen the superimposed accident images would be more likely to reject driving under the influence of alcohol than those who had not seen any pictures. But here, too, there was no measurable effect.
Nevertheless, the myth that people were influenced by subliminal advertising persisted. Television stations from Canada to Russia tried to influence their audiences with secret messages. A manufacturer of gambling machines came under criticism because his machines showed a subliminal winning combination. In the USA, the police tried to persuade a wanted murderer to self-report with a hidden appeal on television. Even the CIA dealt with the effect of the secret messages – again without result.
What is really true?
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 divided again: Some received salty biscuits before being given the task of eating savoury biscuits, others did not. Afterwards, all test subjects were given something to drink, and they could choose between the iced tea brand displayed and plain mineral water.
Now an astonishing effect was shown: The group that had previously eaten salty biscuits, i.e. was already thirsty during the task, and had also seen the advertising displayed, actually reached for iced tea eighty percent of the time. All others chose iced tea and mineral water equally.
Attention must be there
Karreman’s experiment shows the following: Subliminal messages have an effect if attention to the topic has been aroused beforehand. The test subjects, who were already thirsty before, had obviously developed an increased attention to drinks, so that the iced tea advertising – even if it was not consciously perceptible – could actually work.
Such an effect is called “priming” in communication studies. If our brain is attuned to a certain fact, we perceive everything that is related to it more strongly. In this way, even such subliminal messages – for milliseconds – can leave traces in our memory.
The fact that our brain actually perceives subliminal messages is also shown by results from neuroscience. Researchers have been able to prove through brain scans that even the smallest stimuli trigger reactions in the head – as long as the attention is there and our brain is not busy with something else.
The British neuroscientist Bahador Bahrami, for example, demonstrated that even images that graze our retinas for only milliseconds trigger reactions in the primary visual cortex. This is a part of the cerebral cortex that is responsible for our visual perception. Although his subjects believed they had not seen anything, his magnetic resonance imaging showed a change in the brain.
What do these results mean?
So are we now 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.
