Research on Subliminal Messaging

In a series of scientific studies, individuals listening to messages played backwards with no accompanying music could discern: the gender of the speaker; whether the message was in English, French, or German; whether the sentence was declarative or a question; and occasionally a word or meaning of a sentence. 

Across a variety of tasks, the studies were unable to find evidence that such messages affected an individual's behavior, and reasoned that if the individual could not discern the meaning of the message, then the presence of these messages would be more likely due to the listener's expectations than the existence of these messages in themselves.

However when comparing sentence pairs, individuals were more likely to be incorrect than if their response were by pure chance: if the message were spoken by different speakers; whether two sentences were semantically related; and label beyond pure chance whether a message was positive or negative in nature, suggesting that individual expectations influenced their response.

In 1958, Vicary conducted a television test in which he flashed the message "telephone now" hundreds of times during a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program, and found no noticeable increase in telephone calls.  In 1973, commercials in the United States and Canada for the game Hūsker Dū? flashed the message "Get it".

While listening to a normal forward message (usually nonsensical), one is simultaneously being treated to a back-wards message. During the 1970s, media reports raised a series of concerns of its impact on listeners, stating that satanic messages were calling its listeners to commit suicide, murder, abuse drugs, or engage in unlawful activity, which were all rising at the time.

Backmasking is a recording technique in which a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward. The study showed 80% of the subjects subconsciously perceived the backward message, meaning they showed a preference for that particular rum. Before the study, participants were able to try to identify any hidden message in the ad, none found any.

In a 2005 study, individuals were exposed to a subliminal image flashed for 16.7 milliseconds that could signal a potential threat and again with a supraliminal image flashed for half a second. Subliminal images are on video boxes, in magazine ads, even in the phone book.

During the same year, Wilson Bryan Key's book Subliminal Seduction claimed that subliminal techniques were widely used in advertising. The effectiveness of subliminal messaging has been demonstrated to prime individual responses and stimulate mild emotional activity.

On November 7, 2007, Network Ten Australia's broadcast of the ARIA Awards was caught out for using subliminal advertising in an exposé by the Media Watch program on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Today subliminal technology is being used for personal development purposes by millions of people worldwide! Including Fortune 500 companies, motivational coaches, athletes, CEOs, celebrities, students, housewives, computer programmers, and even the U.S. Government.

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