History of subliminal message

History

In 1900, Knight Dunlap, an American professor of psychology, flashed an "imperceptible shadow" to subjects while showing them a Mueller-Lyer illusion containing two lines with pointed arrows at their ends which create an illusion of different lengths. Dunlap claimed that the shadow influenced his subjects subliminally in their judgment of the lengths of the lines. Although these results were not verified, American psychologist Harry Levi Hollingworth reported in an advertising textbook that such subliminal messages could be used by advertisers.

James Vicary, a market researcher, falsely claimed in 1957 that quickly flashing messages on a movie screen had influenced people to purchase more food and drink. Vicary coined the term subliminal advertising and formed the Subliminal Projection Company based on a six-week test in which he flashed the slogans "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Eat popcorn" during a movie for 1/3000 of a second at five-second intervals. Vicary claimed that during the test, sales of popcorn and Coke in the New Jersey theater where the test was conducted increased 57.5 percent and 18.1 percent respectively.

Vicary's claims led to a public outcry, and to many conspiracy theories of governments and cults using the technique to their advantage. The practice of subliminal advertising was subsequently banned in the United Kingdom, Australia and in the United States (by the National Association of Broadcasters in 1958, and under the law, in 1974, by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)[3]). But in 1958, Vicary conducted a television test in which he flashed the message "telephone now" hundreds of times during a Canadian Broadcasting Company program, and found no increase in telephone calls. In 1962, Vicary admitted that he fabricated his claim. Efforts to replicate the results of Vicary's reports have never resulted in success.

In 1973, Wilson Bryan Key's book Subliminal Seduction claimed that subliminal techniques were widely used in advertising. The book contributed to a general climate of fear with regard to Orwellian dangers of subliminal messaging. Public concern was sufficient to cause the FCC to hold hearings in 1974, which resulted in a declaration stating that subliminal advertising was "contrary to the public interest", and in the aforementioned ban.

In 2006, a study by Dr. Johan Karremans at the University of Nijmegen suggested that subliminal messaging may have an effect when the message is goal-relevant. The study, however, was criticized for its lack of controls.

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