Exercise 46: The Absolute Threshold Level and Subliminal Messages

 

 

Objectives

 

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1. To show you the relevance of the absolute threshold level concept to marketing.

2. To give you an understanding of subliminal messages in light of the perceptual process and of the absolute threshold level.

3. To make you a more informed citizen on the controversial issue of subliminal advertising.

4. To enable you to analyze the usefulness as well as limitations of subliminal messages.

5. To provide you with experience in evaluating ads that could be perceived as subliminal, and to assess personal experiences you and your classmates have had with subliminal messages.

6. To help you decide on the morality of subliminal messages.

7. To give you further opportunities to learn about and experience subliminal messages by visiting websites.

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Background

 

 

Overview of Perceptual Principles Covered in and Organization of the Remaining Chapter 13 Exercises

 

Recall the consumer information-processing model outlined in Figure 1 for this chapter with its stages of exposure, attention, comprehension, and retention. This and the following three exercises will investigate more closely several phenomena related to the attention and comprehension phases of the process shown in Figure 46-1.

 

<<Figure 46-1 about here>>

Overview of Topics Covered

In Remaining Perceptual Exercises

 

 

Exposure

 

Exposure occurs when a consumer confronts (or is confronted by) a stimulus so that one or more of the sensory organs are activated and information processing can begin. Exposure can be either random or involuntary, such as with broadcast commercials, or deliberate and voluntary, as with online information and print media.  

At the exposure level, the key consideration for the advertiser is reaching the targeted customers by matching characteristics of the target market with those of a medium’s target audience. Advertisements are then placed within media vehicles where they are most likely to be encountered, such as next to interesting editorial matter in a magazine or in a relevant section of the newspaper, as with sporting goods ads positioned in the sports pages.

 

 

Attention

 

Following exposure, the next step in information processing is attention—the degree to which the consumer focuses on the incoming stimulus, thereby allocating information processing capacity to it so that the sensations enter his brain for processing. Job one for any advertisement (or marketing effort, for that matter) is to grab the prospect’s attention!  

This and the following exercise will focus on two aspects of the attention phase. First is the absolute threshold level—the minimum level of stimulus intensity that is noticeable. This exercise concerns this absolute threshold level as well as subliminal advertising—advertising elements that are supposedly snuck in below the consumer’s absolute threshold level or level of consciousness in an effort to secretly influence consumer behavior.

A second phenomenon of interest to marketers in the attention phase, covered in Exercise 47, is the just noticeable difference—the level of stimulus intensity change that can just barely be detected by a consumer, such as a slight price hike or miniscule cut in product quality.

 

 

Comprehension (Interpretation)

 

Exercises 48 and 49 will concern the stage of comprehension—the consumer’s level of understanding and interpretation of the stimulus. Exercise 48 will investigate consumers’ use of surrogate indicators—shorthand signals of product quality or performance, such as price and brand name, which might or might not be valid indicators of the product’s nature. Gestalt principles of perceptual organization—how the arrangement of the components of a stimulus object affects the way it is interpreted by the consumer—will be covered in Exercise 49.

The final hurdle in consumer information processing is retention—the entry if information into long-term memory so that it can be recalled. This will be the subject of Chapter 14 on learning.

 

 

The Absolute Threshold Level

 

 

Psychophysics and the Adaptation Level

 

Whether or not a consumer actively pays attention to a stimulus to which s/he is exposed is determined by a number of factors, one of the most important of which is the level of intensity of the stimulus. Psychophysics is the study of the how the physical environment is related to people’s subjective (psychological) experience, i.e., the relationship between the nature and amount of a stimulus and the sensation that it produces. This discipline investigates the absolute threshold level—at what level of intensity people can just barely detect stimuli—and the differential threshold—people’s ability to sense changes in stimulus intensity.

The lowest level at which a person just barely detects a stimulus is known as that cue’s absolute threshold level (ATL, lower threshold level, detection threshold level). The ATL is the minimal level of stimulus intensity that the individual can perceive, i.e., the point at which a person can just barely notice that “something” is there.5 Remember the hearing tests you took back in grade school? The tone you could just barely hear was your ATL for hearing. A dog whistle is below humans’ auditory ATL.

By studying ATLs, scientists have discovered that our senses are very sharp. For example, a typical person can see a candle flame at 30 miles on a dark clear night (It’s not true that “On a clear night you can see forever”). The average individual can also taste one teaspoon of sugar in two gallons of water and smell one drop of perfume diffused throughout a three-bedroom apartment (therefore, you need not dowse yourself with cologne for people to notice!).

Of course, there are individual differences in such ATLs, so these are only averages. Furthermore, one person might vary somewhat in sensitivity to stimuli from day to day or from one situation to another. Knowing about such individual differences, KFC ran ads emitting high-frequency sounds (the Mosquito Ringtone, popular with teen mobile users) that very few people over 30 can hear, awarding free boneless chicken buckets to the first 1,000 viewers who went online to tell just when in the ad the tone played. 

Despite these impressive sensory abilities, our senses can only perceive a rather narrow range of stimulus intensity. For instance, we are unable to see ultraviolet rays, although bees can. Bats and porpoises can hear sounds two octaves beyond our range. You can’t notice radar (radio waves), but a radar detector can. Firms sometimes hire professionals with relatively low ATLs as taste testers or to determine the efficacy of personal care products such as deodorants (testers actually smell peoples’ armpits—it’s the pits!) and mints (they smell people’s breath).

 

 

The Adaptation Level: A Changing Absolute Threshold Level

 

Sometimes people’s ATLs change over time. Adaptation (sensory adaptation, habituation) is the process of adjusting to or growing accustomed to a frequently occurring stimulus to the point where it is no longer noticed. For example, the first chilly day of winter that comes along feels quite cold. However, after several days of cold you “get used to” the chill so that it is no longer so uncomfortable.

Likewise, stepping into an air conditioned store on a very hot day feels great at first. But after several minutes, you adapt to the cooler level of sensation and no longer notice it. When you enter a locker room, at first you choke on the smell of “eau de locker room,” but after awhile it no longer bothers you. Unfortunately, car safety belt reminders eventual become ineffectual: Although when you first ride in a car, you hear the “ding, ding, ding” reminder to buckle up, after awhile, it doesn’t mean anything to you. 

The adaptation level, then, is that amount of stimulus intensity to which a person becomes accustomed. It serves as a reference point or standard of comparison for changes in the level of the stimulus. Consequently, at a noisy party someone coughing wouldn’t be heard. However, in a quiet room where students are taking a test this same sound would be startling.

How is adaptation relevant to consumer behavior? Marketers must make sure consumers don’t become adapted to marketing stimuli, such as their advertising or packaging, so that they tune them out. This is accomplished by offering change or variety in marketing cues.

Consequently, most advertising campaigns, while featuring similar messages and creative executions of that message, present variations in individual ads so that consumers don’t become bored. Although Wheaties remains the “Breakfast of Champions,” the individual sports stars appearing in the ads and on the package continually evolve—Michael Jordan got old after awhile. In the area of product development, new and improved versions as well as line extensions (new flavors, scents, styles, etc.) keep a product fresh and interesting for consumers as well as provide variety.

In short, consumers should “expect the unexpected.” The adaptation level phenomenon explains why it is so important to use novel stimuli to “break the boredom barrier” or avoid “the yawn factor.”

However, marketers must be cautious in making radical changes, such as altering ingredients in food or drink items or rapidly raising prices. Often the adaptation level is preferred. The reason is that customers might better receive evolutionary change than revolutionary change. For instance, with rapidly rising gasoline prices in the mid-2000s, at first consumes experienced sticker shock. However, the shock didn’t last forever, and people got used to paying $3 a gallon rather than $2. 

Following its merger with Cingular Wireless, ATT&T Wireless decided to phase out the Cingular name. However, they did so gradually over several months, beginning with the tagline in commercials “Cingular is now part of AT&T,” followed shortly thereafter by making the AT&T name more prominent, and eventually dropping the Cingular moniker.

 

Marketing Stimuli and the Absolute Threshold Level

 

 

Some Stimuli Should Be Above the ATL

 

Of course, marketers need to make sure that their important stimuli (ads and the parts thereof, prices on products, etc.) are above the consumer’s ATL. This is a big challenge in cluttered commercial environments. Too often ads blend into the background like “audiovisual wallpaper”: People “see” it, but they don’t really see it; they “hear” it, but they don’t really hear it.

Marketers must therefore resort to tactics to get consumer attention. Examples include ramping up the volume on radio and TV commercials or using other attention-grabbing techniques like shocking or unique headlines in print ads. For example, “I was in love with a girl named Cathy. I killed her” was a riveting headline for a public service ad against drunk driving. Startling sounds like honking horns and ringing phones often open TV and radio commercials to make sure the spots aren’t literally or figuratively “tuned out” by the audience. Likewise, packages on store shelves must rise above the shelf clutter and distinguish themselves via unique, eye-catching graphics to visually pop off the shelves.

 

 

Other Stimuli Should Be Below the ATL

 

However, there are also instances in which marketers do not wish for consumers to detect certain stimuli; they prefer to remain below the consumer’s ATL radar. You have heard of the “fine print” in advertising disclosures, packages, and other written materials. This is so tiny not just to save space but also sometimes to unethically avoid catching the consumer’s attention. Similarly, the audio disclosures in radio commercials that are legally required (“Offer void where prohibited”) usually run at warp speed so that consumers can’t really understand them.

As another example, although consumers might not notice the music in a retail outlet or service establishment, research shows that it can nonetheless influence consumer behavior, with faster music speeding consumers up (as in a crowded restaurant) and slower music making them move at a more leisurely pace (such as browsing in a store).

Another much-discussed tactic whereby marketers allegedly lurk below the ATL is the case of subliminal advertising, to which we now turn our attention.

 

 

Subliminal Advertising

 

 

Overview of Subliminal Influences

 

One much-discussed tactic whereby marketers allegedly lurk below the ATL is the case of subliminal advertising, one of the most controversial topics in advertising. The word subliminal comes from combining two Latin words: the prefix sub (meaning below) with limen (threshold or limit, i.e., absolute threshold level).

Subliminal, then, literally means “below the threshold of conscious perception (absolute threshold level),” i.e., people cannot see, hear, or perceive a stimulus object in any fashion. Consequently, subliminal stimuli (subliminal messages) are cues that activate one or more sensory receptors but are below the threshold of perception (ATL).6

A person’s subconscious perception of subliminal cues is called subliminal perception. Rooted in psychoanalytic theory, the belief is that one can influence consumer behavior by secretly appealing to the subconscious mind with words, images, or sounds.

Over the last fifty-plus years, critics have claimed that advertising agencies use these subliminal stimuli in a process they call subliminal advertising (subliminal seduction)—trying to manipulate consumers by placing hidden images, words, or sounds in print, audio, or video advertising media. The theory is that, although the stimulus is below the consumer’s level of conscious awareness, somehow the subconscious is nonetheless able to process the stimulus, and this can lead to

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(1) attitude change, such as brand preference, followed by

(2) behavioral change, like a product purchase or a store visit.

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However, the advertising industry has consistently and vigorously denied running subliminal advertising. Several marketers have even created ads poking fun at the idea of subliminal stimulation. For example, a Seagram’s gin ad headlined, “Can you find the hidden pleasure in refreshing Seagram’s gin?” pointed out a bubble and said, “If you think this is just a bubble, look again.” A tongue-in-cheek Absolut vodka ad featured a glass of vodka on the rocks headlined, “Absolut subliminal.”

A series of TV commercials for Sprite, playing upon Sprite’s coined word “Lymon,” featured rapid cuts from scene to scene. “Welcome to sublymonal advertising,” declared a voiceover for each spot. “For best results, do not blink.” Even the advertising industry’s trade association, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, has run ads claiming subliminal ads don’t exist and that so-called subliminals are simply the product of overactive imaginations.

In the remainder of this exercise you shall learn about five different types of subliminal stimuli:

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(1) Subvisual messages—briefly presented visual stimuli in motion media such as movies, television shows, and video games;

(2) Embeds—subliminal elements found in print advertisements;

(3) Incongruities and suggestiveness—elements in print ads that aren’t subliminal but perhaps still work at as subconscious level. 

(4) Subaudible messages—accelerated and/or garbled speech in low-volume auditory messages; and

(5) Backward masking—reversed audio messages, usually inserted in rock music.

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You shall learn that, while subliminal stimuli perhaps exist in some instances, subliminals can not be effectively used to persuade or alter consumer behavior. Years of research have shown very limited emotional effects of subliminal stimulation, and there has been no support for its effectiveness in behavior modification. Nonetheless, at least three-fourths of the general adult American population believes that subliminal advertising is purposely created and used to sell products.

Bottom line: If some marketers do use subliminal stimuli, they are wasting their efforts and being unethically sneaky in the process.

 

 

History and Description of Types of Subliminal Messages

 

During the 1950s, the U.S. experienced the “red scare”—fear about the rise of communism and its “mind control.” In this environment of alarm, stories began circulating that advertising agencies were doing motivation research, some of whose findings were being used to seduce customers with subliminal advertising to get them to buy merchandise they neither wanted nor needed.

 

1. Subvisual Messages. The brouhaha over subliminal advertising began in 1957 when a movie theatre in Fort Lee, New Jersey hired the services of Subliminal Projection Company, run by the originator of the term subliminal advertising, James Vicary, His form of subliminal stimulation was subvisual messages—single-frame visual images or words, of milliseconds in duration, implanted into a film (and now also other electronic motion media). These are repeatedly flashed every few seconds, notably in motion pictures, television shows, videotapes, DVDs, video games, and on computer screens.

Vicary’s firm designed a subliminal projection machine that was capable of flashing unnoticeable messages within big-screen movies very briefly (for 3/1000 of a second, every five seconds). For a six-week test run in the movie theatre, Vicary alternated the subliminal messages, “Hungry? Eat popcorn” and “Drink Coke,” exposing 45,699 patrons.

Vicary held press conferences and claimed that the subliminals increased sales of Coke by 18% and of popcorn by 58%. Subsequently, he had ad agencies lined up outside his door ready to pay hefty retainer fees for his services. This episode came to the public’s attention through Vance Packard’s allusions to it as one of the advertising industry’s secret powers in Packard’s best-selling book, The Hidden Persuaders.

However, there are several reasons to be suspicious of Vicary’s claims. He never released a detailed description of his study. Nor has there ever been any independent evidence to support his claims—all attempts at replication of his study failed, including several efforts to influence behavior using televised subvisual messages.

Moreover, Vicary later disappeared after reporters began catching on to his fabrication, leaving no forwarding address and no bank accounts. In an interview with Advertising Age in 1962, Vicary admitted that the original study was a fabrication designed to help his struggling business. And, despite the notoriety, no regulation or legislation has ever been enacted against subvisual communication.

Nonetheless, periodically there are reports of efforts to use subliminal messages in TV commercials. For example, a 1970s TV ad for a children’s game called Husker-Do included the subvisual message “Get it!” until some parents noticed and complained to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This regulatory body then issued a warning against further TV or radio subliminals because, “Whether effective or not, such broadcasts clearly are intended to be deceptive.”7  

Movies have also been accused of planting subvisuals. In “The Exorcist,” a death mask was flashed on screen to give audiences an extra scare. Disney movies have frequently come under attack. In “The Little Mermaid,” a religious group saw a suspect bulge on a character that appeared to be an erection. A wispy S-E-X was found spelled out in the clouds in one scene from “The Lion King.”

During the 2000 presidential election, Democratic officials and some advertising experts accused the Republican National Committee of running a subliminal TV ad. The phrase “bureaucrats decide” flashed around the screen. In larger print, the word “rats” flashed for one-thirtieth of a second while a voiceover criticized candidate Al Gore’s medical plan. Republicans claimed it was an accident and only appeared once. An FCC investigation decided that no disciplinary action was warranted.

Subvisual messages have also entered the computer age, this time with an attempt to use them for peoples’ benefit. For example, an Arizona company introduced self-improvement software called InnerTalk that flashes the user’s choice of 9,000 subliminal messages briefly on the computer screen, regardless of the program running. No one can confirm conclusively that InnerTalk changes behaviors or even attitudes, but for $49.95, computer users can now bombard their brains with hidden messages. Similarly, managers have programmed computers to flash messages such as “work faster.”

 

2. Subliminal Print Ads: Embeds. Concern about subliminal advertising died down until 1974. Then, Dr. Bryan Wilson Key published his popular book, Subliminal Seduction: Ad Media’s Manipulation of a Not So Innocent America. A second book, Media Sexploitation, followed in 1976.

Key’s concern was with print media subliminal advertising. Most notable were embeds—hidden words and images, most of which appeal to subconscious drives such as sex and the Freudian death wish (Thanatos). Key alleged that these faint visuals were being placed in magazine ads via techniques like high-speed photography and airbrushing. Today, digital manipulation is supposedly used as well.

Allegedly, the embeds were subconsciously perceived and could elicit drives such as sexual arousal. This, in turn, supposedly made the products more attractive to consumers, thereby positively influencing their attitudes and behaviors.

Key’s most common findings of embeds included women’s breasts, male and female genitalia, and death masks in the ice cubes of liquor ads. He famously found the word “sex” as well as many unprintable (at least in this book!) four-letter words emblazoned on people’s hair and beards. Key discovered couples in compromising positions in floral designs. He even claimed that the word “sex” was formed by the holes in Ritz crackers, making this delicacy taste even better!

In his third book, The Clam-Plate Orgy (1980), Key described images of group sex and bestiality—tiny people and animals writhing around in ecstasy during an orgy—on a pile of fried clams depicted on a Howard Johnson’s restaurant placemat! His allegation was that, “Merchandisers, by embedding subliminal trigger devices in media, are able to evoke a strong emotional relationship between, say, a product perceived in an advertisement weeks before and the strongest of all emotional stimuli—love (sex) and death.”8

Key’s fourth book, The Age of Manipulation: The Con in Confidence, The Sin in Sincere, offered more anecdotal evidence, such as a McDonald’s ad with a hand dipping a phallic –looking Chicken Tender into sauce. Key hypothesized that the male homosexual taboo is appealed to in many of these ads. Drawing on Freudian thinking, he claimed that when we perceive these images subliminally but repress them, we are irrationally attracted to the ad.

However, there are problems with Mr. Key’s “findings” at both theoretical and empirical levels. Conceptually, he offered no explanation for exactly how subliminal advertising works. Key backed up his case with a hodgepodge of theories from the fields of communication studies, media criticism, and Freudian psychology, most of which is dismissed by the modern scientific community.

Key’s illogic was evident when your author heard him speak at Stonehill College back in the late 1980s. The charlatan confessed, “How this works, I don’t know. But it must work, because advertisers keep using it.” 

Empirically, there is virtually no experimental support for the efficacy of subliminal embeds. Key’s own “research” with his students lacked proper scientific controls, as he has admitted. He simply asked how many of his students saw the embeds he found in ads, and he considered their acquiescence as evidence.

It is true that some psychology experiments have shown that subliminal stimuli can influence high-level cognitive and affective processes (e.g., recognition of and preferences for geometric shapes), although these are fleeting in nature. Some studies suggest that human sensory organs pick up stimuli presented below the threshold of consciousness and that people can process information without being aware of it.

A weak stimulus apparently produces a weak response that induces a feeling, though not a conscious awareness of the stimulus. More recent research also suggests that subliminally presented stimuli can influence behavior.

However, these studies were conducted in artificial laboratory situations. And, the effects are generally so small and fleeting as to be useless in altering consumer behavior. Investigations have failed to show conclusive results in an advertising context.

The key (pun purely coincidental) issue of subliminal advertising is whether subliminal stimuli provide advertisers with a tool to bypass buyers’ defenses without their awareness, so that consumer exposure to subliminals results in effective persuasion and manipulation the consumers’ behavior. The nearly universal consensus is that this is not possible.

The answer appears to be, “No,” for there are several other questions that Mr. Key has been unable to answer:

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• Where is his documentation for the cognitive, affective, and behavioral effects of subliminal advertising? All he offered was anecdotal evidence based on what he and his students “discovered” in print ads. As just noted, Key’s totally unscientific studies entailed leading his students to “see” in ads the same UPOs (unidentified printed objects) he “saw.”

     As the ad industry has pointed out, such “findings” seem to be the product of hyperactive imaginations. Whether or not erotic imagery has been deliberately planted, a diligent search for a phallic symbol will probably uncover it. All of us are able to “see” all sorts of things in clouds, mountaintops, trees, and other objects. East Chicago officials once had to turn off a street light that created a shadow some saw as resembling Jesus Christ. A grilled cheese sandwich supposedly containing an image of the Virgin Mary was sold to an Internet casino for $28,000. For more interesting tales, Google the words “Jesus,” “eBay,” and “toast.” 

• Why are there no witnesses to the preparation of embeds? If subliminals are used by so many advertisers, why was Key unable to quote just one of them on how they employ the tactics? Is there not one unemployed ex-stimulator who can come forward with the truth, perhaps writing an exposé or even a how-to book? Key never cited such an individual. In fact, Jack Haberstroh, an advertising professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, surveyed more than a hundred ad directors throughout the U.S., and not a single one claimed to have ever worked on a subliminal ad!

• If subliminal stimulation is rampant and urges people to buy, why don’t the government and other public service advertisers use subliminal ads to make people stop taking drugs, abusing children, and driving drunk? College professors could even use subliminal messages in their overhead and PowerPoint slides and in the videos they show their classes to encourage students to study hard, stop going to wild parties and staying up late, give up smoking and excessive drinking, and be courteous and attentive to and absolutely idolize their instructors!

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     The academic community, the advertising establishment, and even government regulators all nearly unanimously pooh-poohed the notion of subliminal advertising during the Vicary and Key eras. But, the legend lived on.

 

3. Subliminal Print Ads: Incongruities, and Suggestiveness.

 

There are two other types of print advertising sometimes described as “subliminal” that don’t actually meet the definition of this term since people often are aware of them: incongruities and suggestiveness. Nonetheless, they can at times operate at a low level of awareness, perhaps even subconsciously

Incongruities are portions of ad containing an inconsistency—two or more of its elements do not logically fit together. There is something wrong with the ad’s picture that isn’t evident at first glance. For example, an ad for Jantzen swimsuits included a female whose trunks were unusually loose and contained a zipper fly, and the man with her wore swim trunks matching her brassiere, implying crossdressing. Another ad for Benson and Hedges cigarettes featured a protruding right hand that was placed at an angle such that it could belong to none of the characters in the ad.

Several advertising researchers have suggested that such ads lead to more information processing as well as arousal, and consequently more favorable ad evaluations.

Also, there are print ads containing suggestiveness—the advertisement implies more than the written copy suggests. Although suggestiveness is common in advertising, it isn’t subliminal because we are supposed to notice the suggestive ad elements.

Suggestiveness occurs when the message is not blatant, i.e., it isn’t spelled out explicitly in words but rather is subtly implied via use of verbal language, body language, color, and other perceptual devices. Such implicit communications often include sexual innuendo—subtle sexual messages.

For example, a Snickers candy bar ad depicted a mom hugging her son, saying, “When he comes home from school hungry, there’s only one way to satisfy him—and me,” perhaps implying incest. A Levitra TV commercial featured a 40-ish woman sporting a man’s dress shirt, which, to some observers, suggested she had just engaged in sexual relations.

Unfortunately, even some advertising people are guilty of this misuse of the term “subliminal” and thereby perpetuate false beliefs in the industry’s practice of subliminal advertising.

 

4. Subaudible Messages. The first three categories of subliminal seduction concern visual media. However, the next two types of subliminal communication involve auditory media.

Subaudible messages (subaudible communications, audio conditioning, threshold messaging, psychoacoustic persuasion) consist of accelerated (time-compressed) and/or garbled speech played at a low volume and masked under a “carrier,” such as music or ocean waves, so that the message can not be consciously heard.

The technique employs spoken words or messages repeatedly transmitted or broadcast below the threshold of normal hearing. The claim is that, while the message is unintelligible and therefore goes unnoticed at a conscious level, it is processed at a subconscious level, leading to affective and/or behavioral changes.

Department stores in both the U.S. and Canada have reportedly reduced shoplifting by using a “little black box” or sound mixer, like that employed by deejays, to fuse bland “elevator music” with subliminal anti-theft messages, such as “I am honest. I will not steal. I don’t want to break the law. If I break the law, I will go to jail.” Sales organizations and athletic teams have employed subliminal motivational tapes to rally the troops, and doctors have used them to calm patients in waiting rooms. Also, self-help audiocassettes were popular during the 1980s and ‘90s to assist buyers in breaking bad habits like smoking, losing weight, and improving their willpower.

However, subaudible messages in rock music have been blamed for encouraging destructive behaviors like worshiping Satan or committing suicide.

While there is mixed evidence of the effectiveness of such messages, researchers note that only individuals who are predisposed toward what the subaudible messages advocate will accept them. Hence, a normally honest person will respond to the suggestion “I’m honest - I will not steal,” but a professional shoplifter will not.

Subaudible messages seem to work like hypnotism: You can subconsciously encourage people to avoid or undertake certain behaviors only if they are so inclined. Also, many researchers believe that subaudible communications work due to the placebo effect: People expect them to work, and so they do.

So, the fears concerning subaudible messages in rock music destroying our youth are largely unfounded, except perhaps in the case of listeners who are already inclined toward what the messages suggest. For instance, the families of two boys who committed suicide in 1985 sued heavy metalists Judas Priest for supposedly placing in a song the subliminal message, “Do it,” that the plaintiffs believed pushed their sons into suicide. However, after an exhaustive review of this subliminal issue and many close listenings to the song in question, the judge found in favor of the band and its record company, CBS. He declared that scientific evidence was lacking and too many other factors could account for the suicides, such as drugs, alcohol, and dysfunctional families.

While there are no reported advertising applications of subaudible messages, the evidence suggests that this is for good reason: They would be impotent in changing consumer behavior.

 

5. Backward Masking. Also known as backmasking and audio reversal, backward masking entails inserting an undetected message into an audio medium such as a record, tape, CD, or DVD by playing the message in reverse. Although the words can’t be consciously perceived when the audio is played in its normal, forward manner, the claim is that these imperceptible communications are heard at an unconscious level, thereby influencing attitudes and behavior.

Reported applications have occurred in the world of rock music. The Beatles were among the first to employ the technique. When your author was a teenager in the age of vinyl, upon hearing certain media and word-of-mouth reports about the existence of hidden backward messages in various Beatles tunes, he and some friends tape-recorded those songs on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. When they reversed the tape they heard such ditties as “Paul is dead,” “Turn me on dead man,” and “I buried Paul.” However, this all turned out to be a public relations ploy at a time when the group’s popularity had peaked and they needed to revitalize their dominance.

The 1970s and 1980s saw an explosion in backward masking in rock music. The band Queen had a tune called “Another One Bites the Dust” that generated attention when it was reported that the song contained a reversed message: “It’s fun to (or, in another interpretation, “We decided to”) smoke marijuana.” Led Zeppelin’s epic “Stairway to Heaven” reportedly contained seven satanic messages, such as “So here’s to my sweet Satan” and “Satan is Lord.”

Jefferson Starship’s lyric “It’s getting better” translated to “Son of Satan.” Electric Light Orchestra sang “On a voyage of no return to see,” which reversed to “He is the nasty one/Christ, you’re infernal/It is said we’re dead men/Everyone who has the mark will live.” The Car’s “Shoo Be Doo” came out as “Satan,” and Black Oak Arkansas’ “When Electricity Came to Arkansas” turned into “Satan, Satan. He Is God, he is God.” (To hear samples of rock music tainted with audio reversals, go to www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Birdland/5430/revolutionrev.aiff.)

One theory underlying backward masking is that selective cognitive processes ordinarily screen out unwanted information. However, when data enters our brain backward, it is not filtered, and somehow the subconscious can translate it to become meaningful. Supposedly, when hearing these songs forward the brain picks up the backward messages subliminally. Consequently, they can affect one’s mind, actions, and personality.

Clergy have claimed that individuals who listen to backward-masked rock music are more likely to become drunks, drug addicts, sexually promiscuous, and Satan worshippers. However, this overlooks the fact that these behaviors are most characteristic of rock’s primary target audience: teenagers and young adults.

However, researchers have shown this theory to be untrue. Humans simply do not have a subconscious speech perception mechanism that can decode a reversed signal. Remember that basic principle of marketing research: Correlation doesn’t prove causality.9

It appears that backward masking is ineffectual in influencing people and of no value for marketing, other than stirring up word of mouth and publicity for rock groups!

 

Conclusion on Subliminal Advertising

 

Public Fears are Unfounded. Although subliminal advertising is rare and ineffective, the public continues to view it as a societal menace. Why is this?

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At least since publication of The Hidden Persuaders, the advertising industry has suffered a very negative image of being hucksters and manipulators trying to control consumer behavior.           However, this belief denies consumer sovereignty—the consumer is not a dupe to be manipulated but rather an independent thinker to be served. It also runs counter to the marketing concept—to be successful, a firm must give its customers what they want and need, not what they don’t require and desire.

Sensationalism sells. An unfortunate aspect of human nature is that people love to dish dirt and wallow in the mud.

P. T. Barnum once said people love to be fooled and that “there is a sucker born every minute.”

People dislike the fact that advertising conspicuously attempts to influence (not manipulate) them. If folks can’t explain certain emotions or purchases, or if they experience post-purchase regret, it is more comfortable to blame mysterious forces at work than to take personal responsibility.

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In short, all of the evidence suggests that subliminal embeds do not hold the threat of turning the public into mindless automatons or quivering globs of compliance at the mercy of marketers.

None of this is to deny the existence of occasional attempts at subliminal ads. There will always be dishonest people doing deceitful things, such as sneaking hidden messages into ads. The deliberate use of subliminal communication is immoral because it is dishonest, violates the consumer’s right to know, and tries to control human behavior in violation of free will.

Although it is quite possible that certain prankster art people in ad agencies have gotten their jollies by sneaking embeds into their work for fun (but certainly not profit!), the widespread practice of subliminal advertising simply does not exist. In those rare cases where it is used, it is relatively ineffectual. Subliminals only work to some degree in the case of constant message repetition (as with subvisual messages and subaudible messages) and where audience members are predisposed toward the message.

It is true that in tightly controlled lab settings, subliminals have produced mild but fleeting emotional reactions and heightened existing drives. However, there is virtually no research evidence supporting their effectiveness to alter consumer behavior. A big gap exists between perception and persuasion when it comes to subliminal advertising.

Pragmatic Difficulties Hinder the Efficacy of Subliminal Messages. Furthermore, there are quite a number of practical difficulties in using subliminal messages:

<<BL>>

• Recall from earlier exercises in this book that needs and wants cannot be created. Instead, marketers should appeal to and satisfy existing drives, which they can heighten and influence only at a general level. For example, a subliminal message saying, “Drink Coke” might help induce thirst, but not necessarily for Coke—it could trigger a desire for Pepsi if that is the consumer’s favorite cola, or even for water.

     Therefore, to change consumer behavior against consumers’ free will is impossible. Because consumers remain sovereign, it is always wise to work with consumer predispositions.

Supraliminal stimuli (ordinary stimuli, above the threshold level) tend to overpower or nullify subliminal s (hidden below the threshold level). Indeed, psychological studies demonstrate that a strong stimulus produces a strong response and a weak stimulus a weak response.

• Perceptual thresholds are variable across persons and over time for any one individual. Consequently, what is subliminal for some will be supraliminal for others, and what is subliminal for someone today (say, if the person is tired or feeling “blue”) could be supraliminal for that person tomorrow.

     To go undetected by virtually everyone, subliminal stimuli would need to be at an extremely low threshold level, perhaps too low to have even a subconscious effect on most people. (Recall the parents who noticed the subliminal message “Get it” for Husker-Doo.)

• People selectively screen out supraliminal stimuli not consistent with their predispositions and probably do so for subliminal stimuli too.     In their normally busy worlds, individuals do not typically give undivided attention to a stimulus as subjects in subliminal experiments do.

• Since consumers subjectively interpret stimuli, misinterpretation is likely. Was that message “Drink Coke,” “Drink Cola,” “Drink Pepsi,” “Drink cocoa,” or “Stink Coke”?

<<END BL>>

     Recall how the ad industry claims that most so-called subliminal embeds are simply the products of overactive imaginations. It bears repeating: We see and hear what we want to see and hear.

     Please—lose no sleep tonight over being subliminally seduced by Madison Avenue.

 

 

Review Questions

 

<<NL>>

1. Explain the relationship between adaptation and the absolute threshold level. 

2. Explain the relationship between subliminal stimuli, subliminal perception, and subliminal advertising.

3. Describe each of the five types of subliminal messages, how each one has been used, and the limitations of each.

4. Why do most people believe in the power of subliminal messages?

5. Discuss the practical difficulties in using subliminal messages.

6. What are the ethical problems with subliminal advertising?

<<END NL>>

 

 

In-Class Applications

 

<<NL>>

1. For each of the following advertisements, identify any evidence or possibilities of subliminal advertising based on the three types of print ad subliminal elements described in the Background: embeds, incongruities, and suggestiveness.

    Are these ads more effective through the use of such possible subliminal elements or would they have been just as effective without hidden messages?

    For more information (or, at least, opinion) on how these ads are manipulated, check out www.angelfire.com/rock/cpar/p2k/2ksep17paperless.html.

 

2. Consider the following quotation from the FCC Broadcasting and Advertising Regulations (June 1999): “We sometimes receive complaints regarding the alleged use of subliminal techniques in radio and TV programming. Subliminal programming is designed to be perceived on a subconscious level only.

     “Regardless of whether it is effective, the use of subliminal perception is inconsistent with a station’s obligation to serve the public interest because the broadcast is intended to be deceptive.

     After reading the Background for this exercise and this quotation, what is your impression of subliminal advertising?

     Could it be effective in changing consumer behavior? Could it ever be used as an ethical practice?

     Is limiting the use of subliminal messages a violation of an advertiser’s right to free speech?

 

3. Visit the following websites and see how subliminal messages have been used in other forms of media: www.snopes.com/business/hidden/hidden.htm#ifield, www.snopes.com/disney/films/films.asp, www.sdst.org/shs/quest/pathfinder/submes.htm www.hypnoticmp3.com/about_subliminals.htm, and http://voice.paly.net/view_story.php?id=2399. What is your opinion on what you have read and viewed on these sites? Were these subliminal effects strategically manufactured, or are they simply “in the eye of the beholder”?

 

4. Although subliminal messages have been declared an unsuccessful attempt at significantly altering consumer behavior, many Americans still believe in their existence. This is ever so evident in the purchases of self-help tapes, based on the notion of subaudible messages, which can be further explored at www.infinn.com/subliminal.html and at www.infinn.com/subliminaldownload.html. Have you ever purchased or used one of these tapes? If so, did it alter your behavior and/or mindset? Do you think these tapes actually have an effect on people or are buyers just convincing themselves that they work to ease the pain of cognitive dissonance?

 

5. Do you recall having ever seen any ads which you believe were subliminally stimulating? Do you believe the ads were effective? Were they ethical?

     Do you know anyone who has ever claimed to be the “victim” of subliminal advertising? Do you or does anyone you know have any experience with any of the types of subliminal messages discussed in the exercise?

<<END NL>>

 

Written Applications

 

<<NL>>

1. Answer Question 1 in the In-Class Application above for four of the following ads.

2. Find three more ads that someone might believe contain subliminal messages and repeat the analysis in Question 1 above.

3. Answer Questions 2 and 3 above.

4. Answer either Question 4 or Question 5 above.

<<END NL>>