Subliminal Communication

1
Subliminal Communication

• Damn lies from people who ought to know better!

2
The Judas Priest Subliminals case

• 1990 Federal court case in Reno, NV
• Raymond Belknap (killed immediately) and James
  Vance (horribly disfigured)
• 6.2 million claim against CBS J. Priest
• Conclusion Judge rules against the plaintiffs,
  but.

3
Definitions

• What subliminals are not using sex to sell,
  women in beer ads, half-naked men in perfume ads,
  etc.
• Classes of subliminals
• audio embeds
• backward masking
• visual embeds
• Nature of the claims made subliminals will lead
  you to unconsciously do things you wouldnt
  consciously do

4
Some Terminology

• The limnus point
• Supra-liminal messages
• Subliminal messages

5
The Early Evidence

• James Vickery and the New Jersey theatre
  experiment
• A ripple across America
• 1958 Canadian experiment
• Congressional hearings
• National Association of Broadcasting revises its
  code
• Australia and UK ban subliminals

6
Wilson Bryan Key and the pursuit of Subliminals

• Subliminal Seduction (1972)
• Media Sexploitation (1976)
• The Clam Plate Orgy (1980)
• The Age of Manipulation (1989)
• His thesis
• Places he has found subliminals Ritz crackers,
  18th century paintings, gin ads, placemats in a
  restaurant, all kinds of music, and cigarette ads

7
Key Quotes

• Every person reading this book has been
  victimized and manipulated by the use of
  subliminal stimuli directed into his unconscious
  mind by the mass merchandisers of media. The
  techniques are in widespread use by media,
  advertising and public relations agencies,
  industrial and commercial corporations, and by
  the Federal government itself.
• Wilson Bryan Key
• Subliminal Seduction

8
Key Quotes, Part II

• The books are intended as exposes, critiques,
  revelations about the most dangerous affront to
  sanity, freedom, and survival that now threatens
  the earths population. Subliminal
  indoctrination may prove more dangerous than
  nuclear weapons. The substitution of cultural
  fantasies for realities on a massive, worldwide
  scale threatens everyone in this precarious
  period of human evolution. Present odds appear
  to favor total devastation W. B. Key, 1989

9
Why Key (and all the others) are JUST PLAIN
WRONG!!

• No supporting theory of perception
• Self-sealing arguments
• If true, no product would ever fail!
• No explanation of agency, that is, why would
  writing SEX on a Ritz cracker make you want to
  buy it?
• No empirical support for claims of subliminal
  effectiveness

10
Why Key is wrong, cont.

• There is no empirical documentation for stronger
  subliminal effects, such as inducing particular
  behaviors or changing motivation. Moreover, such
  a notion is contradicted by a substantial amount
  of research and is incompatible with
  experimentally based conceptions of information
  processing, learning and motivation.
• Dr. Timothy Moore
• Cognitive Psychologist

11
Why Key is wrong, cont.

• During the last few years, we have been
  collecting published articles on subliminal
  processes, gathering more than 150 articles from
  the mass media and more than 200 academic papers
  on the topic. In none of these papers is there
  clear evidence in support of the proposition that
  subliminal messages influence behavior.
• Pratkanis and Aronson,
• The Age of Propaganda

12
Empirical Evidence to the Contrary

• Study by Pratkanis and Aronson
• Analyzed subliminal self help tapes
• Tapes for improved memory and improving
  self-esteem
• Tapes divides into four groups 2 with accurate
  labels, two with labels switched
• Study participants did pre-tests on memory and
  self-esteem, then listened every day for five
  weeks

13
The Results!!!

• Retested after five weeks--no evidence of
  improvement HOWEVER
• Participants who got tapes labeled Self-esteem
  enhancement believed they self-esteem was
  higher, WHETHER THEY GOT THE CORRECTLY LABELED
  TAPE OR NOT!
• Same was true for memory
• National Research Council--No effect on human
  performance or perception

14
Why all this matters

• Foreward to Keys 1989 book written by a
  professor of communication in Alabama
• Few published, academic responses to Key
• People already feel powerless vis a vis the
  media--no need to feed that with the myth of
  subliminals
• Recent Republican ad--RATS, superimposed for
  1/30th of a second over Gores name