Subliminal Messages And Subliminal Stimuli

Do you ever watch the Super Bowl for its commercials? Have you ever bought a more expensive product because you had seen its advertisement? If the answer is yes, then you might have been a victim of today’s marketers. Jean Kilbourne, the author of “Killing us Softly” stated in one of her lectures, “The influence of advertising is quick, cumulative and for the most part, subconscious, ads sell more products.” “Advertising has become much more widespread, powerful, and sophisticated.” According to Jean Kilbourne, “babies at six months can recognize corporate logos, and that is the age at which marketers are now starting to target our children.” Jean Kilbourne is a woman who grew up in the 1950s and worked in the media field in the 1960s. This paper will explain the methods used by marketers in today’s advertising. An advertisement contains one or more elements of aesthetics, humor, and sexual nature.

“There are over 250 billion advertisements released to the public every year with the average person seeing over 3000 ads every single day” (Kilbourne). This is an astronomical amount of information for anyone to process in a week let alone in one day. This is a prime example of Capitalism at it’s finest. Controlling the consumer in every aspect of their lives. Jean Kilbourne also talks about how “Only 8 percent of an advertisement is actually processed by the conscious mind, with the other 92 percent being soaked up by the subconscious” (Kilbourne). Thinking about those numbers really brings into perspective how much we are truly influenced by media

Subliminal messages are messages that are perceived in the unconscious mind that most of the time we are not aware of. These messages are mainly designed to influence that way we think and feel. They are used to get people to buy products from their company. Subliminal messages can be perceived auditory or visually. Subliminal messages should not be legal and should be banned from being used in advertisement for it can lead to negative results. There should be another way to advertise that. Doesn’t involve manipulating our minds into buying the products.

Subliminal messages are words, images, or sounds that may arise in television, radio commercials, TV shows, movies, print ads, or recorded music. Mostly, when subliminal messages are seen or heard, they are not acknowledged for what they are. In fact, they may be ignored by the conscious brain and be beyond the level of conscious perception (“What are Subliminal Messages?”).

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Subliminal messages are prearranged thoughts or ideas placed into the subconscious mind. Subliminal messages involve reacting to stimuli that are above your physiological threshold but below your perceptual thresholds. So basically your brain processes the messages without you knowing. The two main types of subliminal messaging are auditory and visual. In these two categories there are also subcategories. According to Anthony Pratkanis and Anthony Greenwald, who are Psychology professors, have defined these four different subcategories as:

Advertising and upbringing are forms of subconscious conditioning because when the characters are constantly surrounded by these images and ideas they start to accept them as truth (Calder 73). Dr. Bransom, in A Clockwork Orange, states “But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal penetration” (Burgess 129). Bransom explains that the basis of their conditioning technique is through the subconscious. They believe that this will change the root of the problem as changing the subconscious changes feelings

In fact, “from 1997 to 2007, these procedures, overall, rose 457% to almost 12 million per year and an increase of 114% in actual surgeries, such as breast implants and liposuction”(Hodgson), all as a result of the influence of the advertising environment. Yet despite these statistics, many people feel exempt from the influence of advertising, this is because “only 8% of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind, the rest is worked and reworked deep within the recesses of the brain”(Kilbourne). This working and reworking of the ad’s subliminal message of the brain is exponentially increased by the amount of ad’s the average American is exposed to every day. On average, Americans are exposed to over three thousand advertisements per day and will have been spent two years of their lives watching advertisements on the Internet and television by the time they die. This two hundred and fifty billion dollar per year industry that we call advertising profits from the appeasement of its consumers but at the cost of the consumers mental state. The cost of this environment, however, goes much further than just the environment itself, and extends rather into the direct objectification and dehumanization of women.

Cyber bullying is a rapidly growing issue that directly affects adolescent health, and because 95% of teens use the Internet, and 81% use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and Instagram, they are susceptible to online harassment 24 hours of the day. ("Cyber Bullying and Bullying Must Be Studied Within a Broader Peer Victimization Framework"). According to the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 14.8% of high school students have been electronically bullied throughout their school year ("Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance — United States, 2013"). Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point talks about the little things that lead up to the climax of an epidemic, which he describes as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point” (Gladwell 12). In the book he elaborates on the three rules of epidemics and the critical roles that they play in the outbreak of social chaos. The first rule of an epidemic is the Law of the Few, and it describes why some issues become widespread epidemics, and why some don’t. Gladwell says, “the answer is that the success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of gifts” (Gladwell 33). What he is saying is that the people involved in a certain subject matter are the ones who mold the epidemic into what it is and how far it gets. He puts these people in three

Dave Ramsey, America’s most trusted financial adviser and a radio show host, once said, “We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.” (Ramsey). Ramsey’s quote reflects the state of consumerism that our society is going through. Most of us can easily relate to this quote, let’s be honest most of us have been there done that and then later question our genuine need for whatever we have bought. Regardless, if we feel guilty or not we ought to ask ourselves why and what made this purchase seems so important and necessary at the time. Although this might not come as a surprise to most of us, the answer would be the advertisement industry. In 2016, The United States has spent more than 198 billion U.S dollars on advertising, making America the leader in advertisement in the world (Statista). These ads are designed to force consumers to keep buying things that are unnecessary by sending subliminal messages and applying psychology to trick the consumer into a spending spree. In his short story, “Subliminal Man”, J.G. Ballard uses science fiction approach to illustrate to his readers the preposterous techniques that the advertising industry has been using to boost consumerism. Ballard believes that the consumer’s brain has been tricked into buying against their well, by using technology and applying subliminal technics. Ballard short story questions the effect of consumerism on our moral values, lifestyle, and behavior. Ballard claims that

Advertisers and marketing companies are mostly interested in subliminal manipulation because by targeting consumers’ subconscious mind, they can control their involuntary actions, emotions and beliefs. The subconscious part of our mind is able to process around 20,000 pieces of information per second, where as our conscious part can only cope with about forty. This function explains why any subliminal message that our subconscious receives, can be received and responded to by consumers without them ever being aware of it. This form of mind control can be very powerful if used correctly, it could influence consumers to want and buy a product without their control (Winder).

The viewer sits on the couch, nestled inside a cozy, warm blanket with a large bowl of buttery and salty popcorn on his lap. His heart starts racing as the movie reaches its climax. Just as his lungs stop breathing and his eyes grow wide with fascination, the channel changes to an old advertisement that he’s seen a thousand times. Ads like that one appeal to the three main techniques that have subliminal messages to viewers. These different techniques have proven to be effective with television watchers. Advertisers use these three techniques to target a certain audience.

Living in a dorm room is full of distractions. You have roommates doing whatever they want, friends barging in whenever they feel like, noises all over the place that you can't control, a constant party invite you feel like you have to go to and just a million other things that always seem more fun than studying. But when you're commuting, you don't have to deal with these distractions. You can go home to your comfy bed and do your homework in silence. I know a lot of my friends who lived at the school felt pressured to go to every party, which really put a dent in their schoolwork as a commuter, you don't have parties going on in your house every night, so you can just

This was greatly adapted in the 1950’s and has moved onwards, becoming more common in the present. Subliminal advertising largely started in movie theaters, where in cinemas they would strew messages saying “drink Coca-Cola (Sheehan, K. B. 2013).” The “drink Coca-Cola” was a phrase that would appear on the screen during the start of the movies and during the intermission and it would subconsciously impulse the viewer to buy Coca-Cola from the food court. Coming into the future this method is used in videogames where while playing you are met with company logos upon starting the game and thereafter shown products from other companies that are placed within the game. Some of the oldest advertisements that appear are from canned beverage companies and now newcomers such as car companies are coming into play, all the while polluting our screens with more subliminal advertising. The introduction of subliminal advertisements into video games has become the next step for many companies taking advantage of a person getting engulfed in the game screen in front of them. In relative concept, companies are taking advantage of the real estate that is your television or your computer and even your mobile phone to get you to buy their products.

“Advertising is far from impotent or harmless; it is not a mere mirror image. Its power is real, and on the brink of a great increase. Not the power to brainwash overnight, but the power to create subtle and