Question

You decide to go to work for a presidential candidate in the next election. You think that the way for you to get folks to vote for your candidate is to use some psychology. So, you make a deal with a soft-drink company to insert a picture of your candidate into its commercials for only a brief instant. It will be so quick that no one will notice the picture. That way, the candidate's image will enter viewers' subconscious minds and make them vote for your candidate. What psychological processes are you trying to use and will they be likely to work? Why or why not? What is another strategy that could be used?

Answer 1

The psychological process at work here is subliminal perception. Subliminal perception is supposed to occur when a stimulus is too weak to be perceived yet a person is influenced by it. .The process usually refers to stimuli too weak or distorted to be detected through conscious effort. Subvisual messages are visual cues that are flashed so quickly (generally a few milliseconds) that people don’t perceive them.

Emerging research has shown that subliminal messages can influence our thoughts and behavior (see Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980 for one of the first notable studies). Other studies include Fitzsimons, Chartrand, and Fitzsimons (2008), Murphy and Zajonc (1993), Bornstein, Leone, and Galley (1987) and Légal, Chappé, Coiffard, and Villard-Forest (2011). Hence, it is possible that inserting a picture of the advertisement in commercials will have an impact. In place of this, subaudible messages can be used which are low volume audio cues that are inserted into a louder audio source, such as music.