Research on subliminal effects dates back to the late 1800s. The real public outcry about subliminal manipulation dates to 1957 when a marketing researcher called James Vicary claimed that he had found dramatic increases in sales of Coca-Cola and popcorn when he had flashed the phrases "Drink Coca Cola" and "Eat Popcorn" for 1/2000 of a second during the showing of a movie (ironically, the movie was called "The Picnic"). The response from the public was close to mass hysteria. Individuals and legislators dreamed up dire images of the future where everyone was converted into subliminally manipulated automatons. The fire was further fueled with the publication of Vance Packard's book on motivation research in marketing entitled "The Hidden Persuaders." Interestingly, several years later, Vicary admitted his "experiment" was a hoax -- but that has done nothing to diminish the public fear of subliminal manipulation.
Subliminal messages can be studied in a variety of categories. Basically, subliminal advertising can be classified on the basis of the delivery mechanism. That is, how is the subliminal message carried to the audience. This site discusses each of the following delivery mechanisms and gives a variety of examples of each:
In general, research on subliminal effects has shown small effects in controlled conditions. Decades of research by top researchers in the field have found no evidence of subliminal messages influencing behavior in real-world settings.
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The Subliminal Site:
http://sbe.d.umn.edu/subliminal/
© 2001 Rajiv Vaidyanathan