Subliminal messaging and Intuition      

Lets start with WikiPedia:

Intuition may refer to:

• Intuition (philosophy), the act by which the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas
• Intuition (knowledge), understanding without apparent effort

Subliminal stimuli ( literally “below threshold”), contrary to supraliminal stimuli or “above threshold”, are any sensory stimuli below an individual’s absolute threshold for conscious perception.

source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli

Where “subliminal messaging” was understood as secret code. Flashes of images intended to influance our subconscious so it will lead to certain choices/thoughts.

Mostly know was example of Coca-Cola experiment presenting word “thirsty” in very, very short period of time, so you wouldn’t notice it. Aparently subconscious did made a record of it. When this was followed by ad of coca-cola where attractive lady was satisfying that desire, it made huge effect. But becouse it is very dangerous field to play with peoples subconsciouss it was banned and subliminal messaging in “hardcore” version like that is illegal. Now it is common term to describe sugestive advertising based on associations. For instance this image.

More examples avaliable on http://gargasz.info/subliminal/

Recently reading “Charaktery” psychological monthly I came acros article by Dorota Krzemionka uncovering trues and myths about intuition.

She is trying to prove that there is something like inuition. But it is not “special gift”. It is rather brain-skill.

We all have two sets of skills, two minds:

- Involuntary and unconscious

- Intentional and rational

We all know what Intentional and rational means, but Involuntary and unconscious is still area which we are discovering. Starting from Sigmund Freud as mechanism of repression.

You all have seen criticism toward Freuds theories, personaly I am big fan of his work. Simply becouse he brought so much to human kind it is impossible to ignore his greatness. Whatever he was wrong or right he followed principle of questioning things. And I like that. Not going any further in this discousion here…

As latest reasearch shown unconscious is not only mechanism of repression, but activly helps us on daily basis.

If you think about it as sort of archetype of consciousness.

As IT person I could relate this to computer language. So it would be like data stored on harddrive is unconsciousness and operating memory is conscioussnes. Even hard drives has plenty of informations stored, not all of it is being pulled of to operating memory. Only at the times when needed we opening certain file and voilà.

It it the same with involuntary and unconscious mind. It is registering billions of diffrent details we not paying attention to intentionally. It is like a skills we learned as kids, and they are so obvious to us know that we not thinking about it we just know it.

And by connecting, pairing, uniting and associating number of small details registered through our lives that involuntary and unconscious part of our brain help us to make metter intentional and rational choices. And when it comes to the point where we can’t trace back to source of that facts in our unconscious (which is pretty much all the time) we call it intuition.

It could safe your life in the past, it could make you reach. It is very powerfull area of every single person.

And this why I want to connect those dots for you. Let me present few examples. When I was reading this I was thinking about very same experiment with cocal-cola.

Intuition as chain of connection and association shemes started behind our intentions.

1.  Lets start from research done by Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal. They filmed lectures from Harvard University during their classes. Students were watching 3 seconds of that recordings. They didn’t hear lecturers voice, but they judged lecturers without any hastle. They could say if lecturer was competent, confident and honest towards students. They could place their judgment even on 2 seconds videos. And their judgment was very close to general opinions from all the students after whole semestr.

Thinking, according to David Myers, is happening in large scale not intentionally but behind the curtains. We using knowledge every day, knowledge that we do not have conscious acces.

2. Another example called Blindsight. Group of sick people, who became partitialy blind. Having so called blind spot (area where they can not see anything). Researches placed some images in those “dead” areas. Images presenting for instance stripes. They couldn’t tell what is on that picture, but they they were positive that stripes were vertical (which was true).

We know more then we think we know. We see things we can’t see.

3. Another experiment from psychologist Robert Zajonc.

Test included exposing diffrent stimuli like smily or angry/sad faces in 20 miliseconds time frame – so participant could not intentionaly notice them. But as their brain is registering everrything  it influanced perception of what came next. They were presented with completly neutral faces. Now those shown after smily faces judged neutral face as more positive. Those shown angry/sad face pointed neutral face rather negative then positive. But they could not explain why.

 

4. Another example was given by Kamilia Dobrenko. People were presented by subliminal message (>=20 milliseconds – word “luxury”). Attendants couldn’t see or tell what the word was, but asked to pick synonyms in bunch of words given on the piece of paper they went straight toward word “comfort”.

 

5. Similar example we can find in work of prof. John Bargh, social psychologist from University of Yale. He presented in same subliminal way some key-words like “wrinkled”, “retirement” or “forgetful”. The he was observing people from panel group. And he clearly could say that those which were participating in the test were walking significantly slower through the corridor. Subconscious have adjusted their behavior to those stimuli.

 

6. Pawel Lewicki Experiment from Tulus University. He was presenting digitally modified faces. Some faces were elongated, others were shortened.

Those were the faces of their lecturers. But they didn’t know that elongated faces where presenting lecturers with reputation of being un-fair and shortened faces are showing righteous. After that they had to judge completely different people.  Students were clearly making their judgment based on face proportions of that particular person.  They couldn’t say why, but each time they judged person with rather long faces as injustice.

Subconscious mind not only registering number of different stimulations but also analyzing relationship between them and spotting trends and connections. The through number of different ways it is signalizing it to us.

For instance for poker players it changes skin conductivity to warn then right before picking bad card.

It is much bigger then our intuitional knowledge combined and its function much greater they Freud originally suggested. We just start to discover this field of unknown in order to understand ourselves. It is raising questions like: is it possible to manipulate people choices, is it right to influence people in this way, what will happen next. Well no to manipulation, no to influence people other than their own benefit. And what will happen next? Well maybe we will be able to discover where dreams are coming from, what really is hidden deep down there in our heads, and what are our real ability regarding intelligence, telepathic abilities, and much more of this unknown area.

So answering most common question:  does subliminal messaging in its “hardcore” version exist? It is like UFO, although we will never find any proof of it, it is so easy to implement that it will be not quite wise decision to ignore it completely.

 

More and less obvius subliminal messaging use in advertising sample gallery.

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