Subliminal messages can influence us in surprising ways

[C1ay]

Flag waving is a metaphor for stirring up the public towards adopting a more nationalistic, generally hard-line stance. Indeed, "rally 'round the flag" is a venerable expression of this phenomenon.

 

It comes as some surprise, then, that studies conducted by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have shown that exposing people to a subliminal image of the national flag had just the opposite fact -- moderating their political attitudes.

 

Further, the researchers say that their studies indicate that, in general, subliminal messages -- that is, messages that are processed by our brains but never reach our consciousness - do indeed influence explicit attitudes and real-life political behavior, a significant extension to what we know about the effects of non-conscious processes.

 

The studies, led by cognitive scientist Dr. Ran Hassin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Psychology Department, show that the subliminal presentation of a national symbol affects not only political attitudes, but also voting intentions and actual voting in general elections.

 

In an article in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Hassin reported on a set of experiments that examined the effects of the subliminal presentation of the national flag. The experiments involved over 300 participants who were recruited on the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University.

 

In the first experiment, the Israeli participants, divided into two groups at random, were asked about their attitudes towards core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Prior to answering these questions, half of them were exposed to subliminal images of the Israeli flag projected on a monitor and half of them were not. The results show that the former group tended to shift to the political center.

 

In other words, a brief presentation of the Israeli flag - so brief, that people didn't even notice it - was sufficient to make people adopt more moderate views. Another experiment, that was conducted in the weeks that preceded the Israeli pullout from Gaza, replicated these results and reflected centrist views in relation to the withdrawal and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.

 

The third experiment was held just prior to Israel's last general elections. The results were identical. The subliminal presentation of Israel's flag drew right wing, as well as left wing, Israelis towards the political center. Crucially, participants who were subliminally exposed to the flag said they intended to vote for more central parties than those who had not been exposed to the subliminal message. The researchers then called the participants after the elections, and found out that people who were exposed to the flag indeed voted in a more moderate way.

 

Why this exposure to a national symbol should have what appears to be a surprising moderating effect remains yet to be studied and analyzed.

 

"I think these results are interesting for two reasons," says Hassin. "First, they provide sound empirical evidence for the non-conscious ways in which national ideologies subtly affect our thoughts and behaviors. We are now extending this research to examine what other ideologies can do so and in what ways this is expressed. "

 

"Secondly," he continued, "these results significantly extend the empirical knowledge regarding the nature and influences of unconscious processes. We are now investigating the mental mechanisms that underlie this phenomenon, and I am confident that this journey will yield new insights to our understanding of the cognitive unconscious - and hence, of consciousness itself."

 

Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

[Pyrotex]

Wow! :shrug:

 

Perhaps the radical right were shooting themselves in the feet when they banned flag burning.

 

Perhaps images of the flag should appear at all voting centers. :)

[mynah]

Wow! :confused:

 

Perhaps the radical right were shooting themselves in the feet when they banned flag burning.

 

Perhaps images of the flag should appear at all voting centers. :)

South Africa, where I live, got a new flag in the mid-90s, and displaying the old flag has acquired emotional and political overtones. It would be interesting to do the experiment here and expose some subjects to the old and some to the new flag.

[Moontanman]

I thought all that subliminal stuff was proved to be hokum decades ago?

[Racoon]

Advertisers know how to target your primal emotions. :hihi::eek:

[CraigD]

I thought all that subliminal stuff was proved to be hokum decades ago?

That it, IMHO, a more accurate summary than the common belief that it powerful and commonplace (though, in the US, illegal!), but somewhat short of fully accurate. While some claims have been clearly shown to he hokum, some instances of subliminal perception have been compellingly shown to be real.

 

At first glance, it’s difficult to reconcile Hassin et al’s results with body of subliminal perception experiment results and the general scientific consensus that images shown too briefly to be perceived don’t have a significant effect on measurable behavior, in particular a large, non-blind 1958 experiment involving all of the viewers of a 30 minute Canadian TV show (see the 4/22/1977 Straight Dope letter “Does subliminal advertising work”). However, there’s somewhat compelling experimental evidence that while subliminal information can’t provoke behavior (eg: cause a person to buy popcorn) it can influence a “forced choice” (ie: a multiple choice question), and very strong evidence that some unconscious part of the psyche does perceive visual information displayed for durations as short as in experiments such as Hassin et al’s (.016 sec, or about 60/sec, a good choice, as most electronic displays such as TVs can present an image no more briefly). A well-known experiment demonstrating this was done in 1972 by R. S. Corteen and B. Wood in which people were administered a mild but painful electric shock at the same instant as a nonsense 3-letter word was subliminally displayed, then measured to show an increase in Galvanic skin response when the same 3 letter word, but not another, was displayed subliminally in the absence of the shock (unfortunately, I can find no online reference to this experiment, only references in papers such as this rather good undergraduate psych student paper, which unfortunately has a broken link to apparently the Corteen and Wood paper which even archive.org can’t mend).

 

The abstract and full html or PDF document of Hassin, Ferguson, Shidlovski, and Gross’s paper can be read at Subliminal exposure to national flags affects political thought and behavior ? PNAS. Although some supporting appendixes are available at Supporting Information ? PNAS The experiments’ raw data are not available, only some imprecisely described ANOVA results. Without these data, I’m not comfortable having an opinion of the paper, other than that I regret the failure to publish these data.

 

The state of the art of psychology (as I don’t think it’s currently a true science) is such that it’s necessary, I think, to treat papers like Hassin et al’s with more than the usual skepticism. It’s also wise, I think, to note that despite Hebrew University being a first-rate university, some of its faculty of have a history of fringe science publications, including the claims to have discovered coded messages in the Hebrew language book of Genesis of Rips, Witztum and Rosenberg popularized by Michael Drosnin’s “The Bible Code”, a claim that has been convincingly discredited by many reviewers.

[Moontanman]

Are we talking about messages put into a medium that cannot be seen by the conscious mind or things like using sex to sell thing with no connection to sex? Sex is used to sell everything from cars to lawn mowers, beer to potato chips. Is this subliminal or is it more subtle than that?

[CraigD]

Are we talking about messages put into a medium that cannot be seen by the conscious mind or things like using sex to sell thing with no connection to sex?

The first thing: messages that test subjects can’t report seeing. Usually, by displaying a plainly visible image for a very short interval, such as 1/60 sec. I’ve read technical definitions of subliminal as any image (or, in principle, sound) that less than 50% of the subjects in a test are unable to report seeing. In the Hassin et al experiments, for example, they questioned subjects after the test, and excluded those who reported seeing any image, even if it was not the one actually displayed. In one of the 3 experiments, for example,

”Of 221 participants, 15 reported they saw a flag at least once, 13 reported having seen other types of meaningful stimuli (there were no such stimuli), 21 indicated the mask reminded them of the Israeli flag, and one participant suspected the stimuli were supposed to affect her responses. The data of all these participants were omitted from analyses.”

Although in principle a subliminal message could be not only visual, but auditory, tactile, or some other sense, most uses of the term refer to briefly displayed visual information. There’s not much evidence that other kinds have experimentally measurable effects, though for senses like smell and taste, one could argue that most perception is subliminal, as most humans have a poor ability to describe such sensations precisely, commonly reporting a nothing more specific than a good or bad feeling from some subtle flavor or scent.

[Pyrotex]

Are we talking about messages put into a medium that cannot be seen by the conscious mind or things like using sex to sell thing with no connection to sex? Sex is used to sell everything from cars to lawn mowers, beer to potato chips. Is this subliminal or is it more subtle than that?

Most of these messages aren't actually subliminal. We can see what they're trying to do. I guess you can call them liminal. Like the ads where buxom babes in thong bikinis, showing the absolute maximum cleavage allowed by law are using "Salad Shooters" to put thin carrot slices on their salads. The ploy is so obvious, it's irritating as hell.

 

However, this doesn't explain the seven Salad Shooters in my closet. :(