FAQ File 5 of 5 (1/10): Subliminal FAQ Intro & Misc.

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Subliminal FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
ANSWERED by TODD I. STARK
Version of February, 1999
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Editor's note: Todd's excellent and comprehensive FAQ
regarding Subliminal Persuasion was once found at this website:

http://www.thothweb.com/content-132.html (Who's computer is this?)

The introduction is reproduced here for the alt.hypnosis
Newsgroup. Hopefully it will someday be posted in its entirety again.

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Since the 1950's, there has been enormous public concern over
hidden messages in art, music, and advertising. Subliminal self-help
tapes are a multi-billion dollar industry. Yet many psychologists
claim that subliminal influence consists at best of uselessly weak
effects, exaggerated by alarmists or profiteers.

This has variously been described as an elaborate hoax, as a
scientific controversy, and as a conspiracy to hide the true story
of subliminal persuasion. Is there a true story ? Who is telling
it ?
The psychologists who claim that subliminal influence is limited to
temporary, weak, lexical priming effects ? The people selling
subliminal tapes ? Authors like Bryan Wilson Key and Vance
Packard, who inspired public interest in questionable advertising
practices?

ABSTRACT

Some years ago, the term subliminal came into popular usage
to mean any kind of deliberately hidden message. A series of
widely read books and articles made many people aware of the
possibility that unseen or unheard messages could be influencing
the way they think, feel, and act.

Unfortunately, the issue has become extremely contentious, with
"skeptics" claiming that "believers" are paranoid alarmists, and
"believers" countering that "skeptics" are guilty of complicity
with a grand advertising conspiracy to subdue the public.

Many of the sources claimed that (secret) research conducted by
advertisers showed that subliminal influence was an effective tool,
and that advertisers were using subliminal techniques on the public.

Reviews of published scientific papers do not seem to support the
claims that research had demonstrated subliminal advertising
techniques to be broadly effective. The claims that the "real"
research is secret are hard to support credibly, but there's another
possible resolution. "Skeptics" and "believers" may be talking
about and emphasizing different things.

Careful experiments have demonstrated that human beings do
process information unconsciously. Even more remarkably,
evidence has also accumulated indicating that unconscious
information processing, unconscious learning, and automatic
responding are a normal part of our daily life, not something limited
to special states or contrived experimental conditions. Subliminal
experiments may be seen as artificial situations where these
unconscious processes are isolated for study.

The experimental subliminal or marginal effects themselves are
weak and usually relatively temporary. However, this is because
the effect is isolated to purely unconscious influence, and usually
not tailored to the personality stucture of the recipient. Marginal
perception of stimuli that are more personally meaningful, especially
presented in a carefully crafted conscious communication context,
can have more lasting and more significant effects on thinking,
feeling, and behavior. This is a central principle in hypnotherapy.

Subliminal "believers" interpret this to mean that the experimental
conditions themselves make weak use of powerful subliminal
effects. Subliminal "critics" interpret it to mean that even under the
best conditions of contrived subliminal influence, the effect is still
weak. They also point out the negligible support for the most
popular form of claimed subliminal influence, subliminal audio tapes.

It boils down to whether subliminal effects can be exploited under
more natural conditions in a more powerful way. Again, here the
evidence is weak for subliminal effectiveness, but the advocates are
persistent and persuasive. And they are often talking about real
kinds of subtle influence that the critics don't really consider
subliminal, or consider of secondary interest.

Unconscious information processing effects and unconscious bias
has always been used by skilled communicators, and can certainly
be exploited by advertisers. This sort of influence is both more
widespread and less novel than most people would think. Like
hypnosis, it turns out to be largely a way to exploit the manner in
which the human mind evolved to deal with the non-verbal
subtleties of face-to-face communication.

The potential for propagandists to take advantage of our evolved
mental blind spots has always been, and remains, a cause for
concern, especially as technology improves our ability to exploit
each other. But most forms of influence leave clues, especially if
we
remain educated about them and use our mind, rather than being
paralyzed by fear of the unseen or the unheard.

The subliminal section of the FAQ was last revised on 3/1/99.

The complete SUBLIMINAL FAQ was once available at:
http://www.thothweb.com/content-132.html (Who's computer is this?)
Hopefully it will become available again in the future.

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MISC.
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The Resource Guide formerly written and maintained by Paul Bunnell
is no longer posted. You may find two Online Resource Guides at:
http://www.royhunter.com/bookreco.htm (Who's computer is this?) (books)
http://www.royhunter.com/hyplinks.htm (Who's computer is this?) (hypnosis links)

The scientific Hypnosis FAQ (written by Todd Stark) is at:
http://www.psychwww.com/asc/hyp/faq0.html (Who's computer is this?)

FAQ File 5 of 5: Subliminal FAQ Intro & Misc....

Entire FAQ Maintained by
Roy Hunter, M.S., FAPHP, Certified Hypnotherapy Instructor
Published Author and Professional Speaker/Trainer
Inducted into International Hypnosis Hall of Fame, 2000
Latest revisions completed on January 6, 2010
Minor update on this file: January 7, 2010

The complete FAQ may also be viewed at any time or downloaded at:
http://www.royhunter.com/hypnofaq.htm (Who's computer is this?)