Subliminal Messaging

Essay by ismael12 March 2004

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Have you ever asked yourself why this sudden need of chocolate after watching a Mars Bar publicity? Maybe it was a subliminal message, a hidden code hardly identifiable with the eye but sent directly to the subliminal part of the brain, which detects it with ease. Those codes are delivered to us in different ways: television, advertising in magazines and newspaper, audiocassettes, etc Are you sure that you aren't being subconsciously manipulated into making decisions that you wouldn't normally make? Are you sure that over the next few days, your purchases of chocolate, clothes, cigarettes, movies, popcorn, Coke, etc... will be completely under your conscious control? Are you even sure that I haven't embedded secret messages into this research paper to manipulate you into giving me a hundred?

If you didn't consciously perceive "secret messages" but you did perceive them subconsciously, then they would be called subliminal. The word "subliminal" literally means "below the threshold of conscious perception" (Hyperdictionary.com).

The threshold is the level at which you are aware of stimuli, so if something is below the threshold, you are not consciously aware of it. Therefore, you may be receiving messages and obeying them without even realizing it! Now we all may ask ourselves if they really work? What I have set out to prove through my research report if they work are a set of examples, comments and facts from subliminal message teachers and history facts.

Subliminal advertisements definitely came to the public attention in 1957. It was reported that a motion picture theater in New Jersey had flashed subliminal messages on its movie screen during the showing of the movie Picnic. These messages appeared on the face of the actress Kim Novak every 32 seconds and urged the audience to "Eat popcorn" and "Drink Coca-Cola" over a course...