 AS A MENTALIST I AM ALWAYS RESEARCHING SCIENTIFIC TEXTS FOR PATTER IDEAS TO SUPPORT MY PERFORMANCES.
Because I often play the subliminal-influence card during my performances, I thought you may be interested in some subliminal facts that over the years have become permanently intertwined with many of my subliminal themed routines. SUBLIMINAL-INFLUENCE IN ADVERTISING. In the 1950’s American psychologists assisted by James Vicary a market researcher at the time carried out an experiment in Subliminal-influence in advertising on US cinema goers. They took a franchise of approximately twenty cinemas spread across various states that were all showing the same feature movie. In the movie shown in half the cinemas, they spliced two still frames of a cold glass of Coca Cola and another two stills of a box of popcorn. The two frames of Coke and popcorn flashed past so quickly that they remained imperceptible to the conscious mind and nobody in the audience recalled seeing anything out of the ordinary as they watched the film. However the results were astounding. The sales of Coca Cola and Popcorn during the intervals were 26% higher in the cinemas with the subliminal advertising than those without. The experiment was deemed a huge success so much so that it led to fears that governments and cults would use the technique to their advantage and the use of subliminal-influence in advertising was banned in many countries including the UK. Vicary of course went on to lecture and write books on the subject including “How Psychiatric Methods Can be Applied to Market Research”, “Seasonal Psychology” and “The Circular Test of Bias in Personal Interview Surveys.” BUT HERE’S THE THING, JAMES VICARY WAS NEVER ABLE TO REPRODUCE THE OUTCOME OF HIS EXPERIMENTS AND LATER ADMITTED HE HAD FABRICATED THE RESULTS. You may think therefore that subliminal-influence in advertising doesn’t work, but how do you know, how can you be sure that every minute of the day you are not being bombarded by unscrupulous advertisers using hidden messages to influence your buying decisions. Recent research carried out by a team from University College London, confirmed the findings from an earlier Harvard study carried out in 1999, both employed a similar method to Vicary’s and both found it was possible to instil emotional thoughts using subliminal messaging, although it seems the system is better at instilling negative thought patterns than positive. It is true that subliminal advertising is not permitted on TV in the UK, according to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom. However they admit there have been a number of cases over the years where the rules may have been stretched somewhat and I have to ask myself, if they can’t see them, then how do they know? Remember this, subliminal-influence is generally said to be below the threshold of conscious perception, quite simply if you can consciously perceive it, then it isn’t subliminal influence. SO THERE YOU GO, NOW ALL YOU NEED IS A ROUTINE TO FIT THE PATTER. Comments are closed.
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