Reply to comment

Given the origin and the negative connotations associated with the term "Subliminal Advertising" or any other Subliminal phenomenon it might as well be better to re-define the terminology. A number of vaguely defined terms are being used in discussions of subliminal effects. For instance, that information are being received unconsciously, subconsciously, not consciously, without awareness, unintentionally, below the attentional threshold or some other related description. The terms in the previous sentence are not synonyms and furthermore they are often used in a careless manner. Without defining them all I will at least discuss one of them, Subliminal.

From my point of view an organism can either receive a stimulus or it cannot receive it. And there is of course an entire spectra of levels in between receiving and not receiving. Where the "real" threshold is, is of course an interesting area to study. That is, how faint a stimulus can be before it becomes subliminal. From this last sentence you can conclude that my position is that a subliminal stimulus should not, in any way, be registered by an organism. Otherwise the stimulus is not subliminal.

There is something paradoxical with researchers studying a phenomenon that according to the definition of the studied phenomenon should not generate an effect in the studied organism. Thereby the researcher should not be able to measure any effect either.

Consider this; you are studying the phenomenon of subliminal advertising, subliminal messages, subliminal marketing, subliminal smells or the like. At the same time, as a researcher you are aware of the fact that the very concept of "subliminal" means that whatever stimuli is being used it will be insufficient as a stimuli. That is, since it is defined as subliminal it will be below the threshold of having any effect on the human brain. Consequently it would be more honest as a professional researcher and more adequate to state, contrary to most studies I have seen, that "after conducting this study we actually found that there indeed is a response (in some way) in the nervous system from the input used in the study, hence the input used does not qualify as a subliminal stimulus". Or that "we found that there was no effect, hence the stimulus can be considered as subliminal."

The point is that a stimulus that generates a response should not be termed subliminal, at least not by professional researchers.

It is my sincere suspicion that some researchers use the word "Sublimnal" for PR reasons in order to get more media attention for their research. Insert the word subliminal and you will automatically get less informed journalists to write about your research with the Coke & Popcorn angle as a foundation. There is of course also the group of researchers, coming from other areas than marketing/advertising, that are unaware of that the original "subliminal advertising" of Coke & Popcorn was a hoax.

//Patrik Nilsson
Stockholm Institute of Communication Science - Stics
www.stics.se