Subliminal Messages
By: Lindsay Berry and Nichole Dinsmore
Subliminal messages are information presented in some way that is difficult for us to perceive it. The information is supposed to be picked up by our subconscious. For example some artists have put commands in their music but it is often so low that we don’t perceive that it’s there. There are also messages in many advertisements like the word “sex” in an ice cube. There are many self-help tapes to help us build our self esteem or quit smoking that are made by putting continuous compliments or commands below the absolute threshold (“the intensity level of a stimulus such that a person has a 50% chance of detecting it”*). Researchers have claimed we can modify or learn new behaviors from subliminal messaging. What if we could actually learn information or facts through subliminal messages? There could be a new way to study, and an improved way to teach. Many people could find ways to benefit from it.
Eventually, someone could figure out the best way to encode or help us make mental representations of the information so we memorize it easier and faster. Then studying wouldn’t take so much effort. But first we must find out if you can learn facts through subliminal messaging.
(http://www.umich.edu/~onebook/pages/tablepages/history.html, http://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm, and *Plotnik, Rod “Introduction to Psychology, 6th Edition” copyright 2002 by Wadsworth Group pg. 638)
