“The biggest problem with advertising is it’s difficult to get people’s attention,” he says. ad have intended such an effect? Pratkanis says it’s possible, since so many Americans seem to believe the technique works - and the creators may have been among them.īut Dave Stewart, a professor of marketing at the University of Southern California, remains skeptical. “Your defenses don’t have time to activate.” “Your brain just takes it in and says, ‘Yeah, I guess so,” she says. This method, she explains, is pervasive in the advertising industry and involves flashing quick, but not unnoticeably quick images to create an impression on the viewer. Instead, she classifies the “RATS” appearance as a possible use of so-called low-involvement advertising. “You can actually see the word for a half second,” she says. Still, as Sharon Beatty, a marketing expert at the University of Alabama points out, the word “RATS” in the G.O.P. “My own experiment shows it’s not out of the question to believe that people pick up association with quick flashes of words - like rats - and it may have some effect on their thoughts at least in the next fraction of a second,” he says. But when the flashed word had the opposite meaning, their reaction was delayed or even reversed. He found when the subliminal word had a similar meaning as the word it preceded, the subjects selected the correct button more quickly. For example, before presenting “sugar,” he would flash a millisecond image of the word “poison” or of the word “honey.” To test for subliminal effects, Greenwald flashed another word for a split second before showing the word subjects could see clearly. Pratkanis and other psychologists argue Key does not back up his claims with adequate tests an analysis.Īt least one new analysis, however, does begin to support the idea that subliminal messages can affect people’s thinking - at least briefly.Īnthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, recently asked a group of people to classify words showed to them as pleasant or unpleasant by pressing one of two buttons. When psychologists later tried to duplicate the study and failed, the marketing entrepreneur admitted he’d made it all up. The example is often mentioned in psychology textbooks, says Anthony Pratkanis, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz.īut what is often not mentioned, he says, is that Vicary’s study was a hoax. The news sparked public outrage, fear and even talk of a ban by Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He claimed even though no one actually noticed the images, the messages reached the subconscious of the viewers and triggered an increase of popcorn and Coke sales by 57 percent. The concept of subliminal advertising first made a splash in 1957 when a marketer named James Vicary said he had subjected moviegoers to split-second messages urging them to drink Coca-Cola and eat popcorn. What’s more, many psychologists argue that even if it had been an accurate use of subliminal advertising, it probably wouldn’t have worked.
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