Science Daily

‘Today, the journal Emotion publishes a study by a UCL team led by Professor Nilli Lavie, which provides evidence that people are able to process emotional information from subliminal images and demonstrates conclusively that even under such conditions, information of negative value is better detected than information of positive value.

In the study, Professor Lavie and colleagues showed fifty participants a series of words on a computer screen. Each word appeared on-screen for only a fraction of second – at times only a fiftieth of a second, much too fast for the participants to consciously read the word. The words were either positive (e.g. cheerful, flower and peace), negative (e.g. agony, despair and murder) or neutral (e.g. box, ear or kettle). After each word, participants were asked to choose whether the word was neutral or ‘emotional’ (i.e. positive or negative), and how confident they were of their decision.

The researchers found that the participants answered most accurately when responding to negative words – even when they believed they were merely guessing the answer.

‘There has been much speculation about whether people can process emotional information unconsciously, for example pictures, faces and words,’ says Professor Lavie. ‘We have shown that people can perceive the emotional value of subliminal messages and have demonstrated conclusively that people are much more attuned to negative words.’

‘Clearly, there are evolutionary advantages to responding rapidly to emotional information. We can’t wait for our consciousness to kick in if we see someone running towards us with a knife or if we drive under rainy or foggy weather conditions and see a sign warning ‘danger’.’

This is a favorite subject of mine - the unconscious mind and things that affect it. Priming is an amazing example where the unconscious mind is influenced by messages that are flashed for less than .33 seconds (the point at which a stimulus is too quick for our eyes to consciously pick up and be aware of). The unconscious mind can be dramatically influenced by subliminal messages, and even sentences in which the words are mixed up.

When I present, I make a point of using such techniques to lead the audience to a more positive emotional state (e.g., joy, contentment, curiosity, awe, surprise, pride, happiness, or interest). I always tell the audience what I am doing and why. Then I let them know just how easy it is to influence the mind by way of these techniques. The scariest part, to me, is that Madison Avenue is aware of such techniques as well. And while there are laws to prevent the use of subliminal messages in advertising. There are no laws of which I know that prohibit techniques such as scrambling the words in a sentence or the letters in a word as was recently done in a Kaiser Permanente Thrive campaign ad. Fortunately, the word that is scrambled is ‘thrive’ so, in my mind, there is little or no negative impact on viewers.

However, it is to our benefit that we be mindful, cautious and aware of these techniques that speak to the unconscious mind as they do influence our behaviors, often outside of our conscious awareness.

Stay awake!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive Psychology Coach