subliminal messages

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Permalink Reply by Thal on May 8, 2009 at 8:29pm

Conrad, I have never seen the research you refer too... but it fits with some that I do know about.

A professor of mine was interested in studying "Love and Attraction". And he wanted to see the impact of physiology on perception. But how can you consistently manipulate a physiological condition and measure it without hooking someone up to some stress machines and giving away what you are up to?

Well this Prof was teaching in Vancouver BC at the time. There they have a park near the ocean that has many narrow ravines with creeks flowing through them... to navigate around the trails there are many bridges over these ravines. The hypothesis went like this... people will experience more anxiety when crossing a bridge over a deep drop, than on a bridge over a shallow drop down to the creek below. So he uses the bridge height as the measure of anxiety. Next, he placed an attractive co-ed on high or low bridges and has her ask some innocuous questions of a psychological nature to males passing by.

So here is the hypothesis: The physiological effects of stress and of sexual arousal are indistinguishable to the body. A male, experiencing a stress reaction, in the presence of an attractive female, will tend to interpret this as a heightened state of attraction to the female rather than as a fear response.

At the end of the 'experiment' the girl invited to the subject to visit her at the psych dept lab for additional testing at some later date. This became the measure of attractiveness. To wit-- the prediction was more males from the HIGH bridge condition, would positively respond to the invitation to the lab than males in the LOW bridge condition. The reasoning was that the heightened state of fear arousal would be interpreted as greater attractiveness to the psych co-ed than on the low bridges, and increase the odds of responding to the invitation. Turns out this little trick worked!

Driving fast, riding roller coasters, etc. things that stimulate a stress response can be associated with secondary stimuli as the intellectual conscious mind re-interprets the situation. (I think this is sort of like an internal re-frame of an internal experience.)

So the use of subliminal sexual stimuli to elicit arousal, can be turned to an increased probability of buying a product or some other intention, if there are suggestions were intertwined. This certainly isn't a startling revelation if you look at the ad-verts for beer, alcohol and cigarettes.

Enough for now... thal

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Permalink Reply by Blankfrost on May 9, 2009 at 6:51am

i am wondering what you refer to when you say non-dominant hemisphere are you refering to the unconcious mind which is a metaphor for all the unconcious processes that happen in the brain? or the right side of the brain which is more active in the hypnosis process?

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