Subliminal Processing
supraliminal
above the threshold of awareness
Wilson Bryan Key
argues that media and advertising are full of subliminal messages - subliminal seduction
subliminal
below the threshold of awareness
James Vicary
claimed he inserted ads in movies to encourage concession sales even though he did not
the hillyard principle
claims that when assessing attentional effects in visual perception, you must control the "stimulus energy" between conditions in order to conclude the effect was attentional
exclusion paradigm
inclusion: complete word-stem with prime, exclusion: do not complete word-stem with prime
we have little _____ to our cognitive processes
introspective access
confabulation
making up plausible theories
electric shock
participants assert that reassurance (or lack of) strongly affected their response even though it did not
backmasking: vokey and keys
participants discriminate various properties of backmasked audio, their performance is compared to chance probabilities (random guessing)
debate team
participants falsely recalled their initial opinions as consistent with their current opinion
attractiveness ratings
participants often confabulate reasons as to why they picked a face that they didn't even pick
lingerie experiment
participants pick the rightmost gown 4:1 but list different reasons for their choice
semantic priming - marcel
people cannot explicitly report the prime, but they are more likely to fill in the word stem with the prime
top-down perception
perception that is driven by context, learning, and expectation (ex: phonemic restoration, ponzo illusions)
subliminal perception
perception without awareness; unaware of stimulus, but detected it in some manner; these stimuli could affect our subsequent behaviors or decisions
methods to test subliminal processing
present a stimulus that is below the absolute threshold for detection and test whether it affects subsequent behavior, divert attention for the subliminal message; present the subliminal message very quickly and mask it
dichotic listening task
subliminal detection of words is present
subliminal self-help tapes
the tape label had a strong effect on self-reported improvement; the actual tape identity had absolutely no effect
judas priest lawsuit
two boys attempt suicide on a playground - WBK claims Judas Priest song backwards says do it over and over
backmasking
when you play a song backwards and it contains a hidden message or sound
