Claire Mizuki Rodham

Science and Environment Editor

Everytime I watch an ad recently, I think to myself, “I have absolutely no idea how this is supposed to convince me to buy this product.” While some ads have been consistent in showing sleek and polished images to bring in buyers, in recent developments, others have been so unrelated to the product that you could play a game of “Guess the Ad!” and still end up wrong 90% of the time.

And that really got me thinking…is there a deeper strategy at work?

“Is the advertising business taking a weird stance to prioritize shock value and forced authenticity to combat our short attention spans, or is there something more intricate at play?”

My second hypothesis was subliminal messaging, but what even is that? Well, as defined by Merriam-Webster, the word subliminal refers to something “existing or functioning below the threshold of consciousness”; therefore, we can infer that subliminal messaging would be sort of like a secret message that isn’t immediately perceptible to us. These are used to target and influence people without their knowledge and to take away our ability to make decisions about the messages that we consume.

In advertising, subliminal messages are typically visual or auditory. For example, according to Klint, a type of auditory subliminal message is “Backmasking,” which is a technique used in songs or audio recordings where speech is played backwards into the original recording and is therefore not detectable consciously.

But how do these subliminal messages work? After all, just because we can’t detect the message consciously doesn’t mean it can influence us…right? Wrong. This is exactly why they can influence us. This is explained best by Healthline, which states that the human brain might perceive and react to subliminal messages without even realizing it; for this reason, they are thought to be a simple way to influence people’s thoughts and even change their behaviour.

Via Owdt

According to Owdt, the human brain’s method of organizing sensation thresholds begins with initial sensory processing, which is followed by thalamus filtering, where the brain determines which information is forwarded to higher brain regions for further action. These subliminal messages are presented below the level of conscious awareness because they may be able to “bypass the primary sensory processing regions and directly activate subcortical brain structures, such as the amygdala for emotional processing or the basal ganglia for automatic motor responses.” Therefore, even though those affected by these subliminal messages may not remember the stimuli, the information may be stored in implicit memory systems and it can affect their emotional responses and their later decisions.

However, according to the National Library Of Medicine, the impact of a subliminal message may not be quite as dramatic as described, saying that it is “often considered harmless because its effects typically decay within a second.” The article clarified that any long term effects influenced by subliminal messaging were only observed in studies where participants were repeatedly provided with highly familiar information. They went on to describe a couple of interesting experiments, one in which they found that subliminal messages could influence decisions concerning personal income. Another experiment revealed that the effects of subliminal messaging didn’t significantly decay between 15-25 minutes. Most notably, they mentionned an experiment where they discovered that presenting vocabulary in a foreign language using subliminal messaging helped participants differentiate whether the translations presented were correct or incorrect.

Considering these effects, it may be useful to try and use subliminal messages to our own benefit. For example, if it is true that these experiments are correct and that subliminal messages could increase familiarity with a language, it could be useful for language learning. And if it can influence decisions related to personal income, maybe you could use it to train yourself to be more responsible with your money.The possibilities are endless, and while subliminal messages have long been seen as silly and grouped into the same box as exaggerated videos on YouTube that claim to change your eye colour, it is exciting to see where this new area of research will develop and whether we can eventually use this level of consciousness to self train and accomplish our goals.