Evidence and Research into Subliminal Messages

Welcome to our page about subliminal research, but before we get into it, please be aware: If you either don’t believe in subliminal messages or don’t want personal change, then they probably won’t work for you. You need to keep an open and positive mind, and you need to personally want to change.

Having said this we want to share with you some of the information which we read ourselves, many years ago - the same information which got us excited about subliminal audio and inspired us to start our own personal journeys of self-improvement through the use of subliminal audio. We were amazed at the changes and results we experienced and ultimately this led to creating our own subliminal audio and perfecting our techniques over the last 10 years.

An Overview

Before we get into some specific research studies which show how subliminal messages can help in terms of self-improvement, here are a couple of case studies which show the nature of subliminal messages generally, and that information really can enter into our minds without our knowledge.

Basic perception without an awareness of perceiving is possible

Researcher Ed Kazdin compiled some secondary research into perception - the first notable one being with surgical patients undergoing anesthetic.

Now the very nature of a strong anesthetic is that it ensures the patient is completely “under” and unaware of all events - simply put, under anesthetic a patient has no conscious perception.

The test patients a set of headphones and played a simple recording of words being spoken in repetition. Then, after the surgery they were presented with the start of a word and asked to complete it - i.e .gui _ _ _ _ / pro _ _ _ _.

The words in this instance which were played were “guilty” and “proud”, and while there are many other possible combinations (such as; guilt, guild, guile; prove, prowl, probe), statistically, patients were much more likely to fill in “guilty” than any other word.

This means that because patients under anesthesia have no conscious perception of the external environment, so information is capable of being perceived without any conscious awareness.

This was actually the first piece of research we read, and we were really excited and inspired to try subliminal self-improvement and learning for ourselves - but we kept reading too and read more about subliminal messages specifically - as in this next piece also from the secondary research of Ed Kazdin.

Audio, transmitted subliminally does reach the subconscious mind

Ed compiled several research studies in which was concluded that peoples' thoughts, feelings, and actions can be influenced by stimuli processed, without any awareness of perceiving.

In these studies, people were simply asked whether or not they were aware of perceiving.

For example, subliminal audio was used; letters of the alphabet or numbers were whispered so faintly that observers claimed that they were unable to hear any sound whatsoever. To test whether they had been perceived subconsciously still, the observers were asked to make guesses regarding the stimuli.

For example, the observers were been asked to guess whether a letter or a digit had been spoken.

The result was so consistently seen that the observers' guesses regarding the stimuli were more correct than would be expected on the basis of chance guessing. So, despite the observer’s saying they were unaware of perceiving the stimuli, their guesses indicated that they did, in fact, perceive sufficient information to make accurate guesses regarding the stimuli.

This style of experiment has been repeated 100s of times and when compiled, they leave no doubt that we can perceive subliminal audio stimulus.

People say they can’t hear anything, but the information does reach their subconscious mind.

This is the official psychology journal write up for Ed’s research: Source: A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Psychology (Vol. 7, pp. 497-499). New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. You can read the full research paper here These two studies showed us that 1. perception without awareness is possible, and more specifically that 2. subliminal audio does reach the subconscious mind. But now things get really interesting... here are some research pieces and case studies which made it into the mainstream media and really led to the rise in popularity that we see today with subliminal audio.

British researchers have shown messages we are not aware of can leave a mark on the brain

Researchers found that briefly displaying subliminal messages so quickly that people do not even consciously notice, does nevertheless change their thinking.

Professor Lavie believes that the ability to subconsciously pick up fleeting signals could have developed as a way of picking up fleeting warnings.

“Clearly, there are evolutionary advantages to responding rapidly to emotional information,” she said. “We can’t wait for our consciousness to kick in if we see someone running towards us with a knife or if we drive under rainy or foggy weather conditions and see a sign warning ‘danger’”.

Professor Lavie believes the research may have implications for the use of subliminal marketing to convey messages, both for advertising and public service announcements such as safety campaigns.

* This article is taken from “The Telegraph”, a broadsheet newspaper from England.

Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark On The Brain

University College London researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain's attention on a subconscious level. The wider implication of the study, published in Current Biology, is that techniques such as subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but still legal in the USA, certainly do leave their mark on the brain.

Using fMRI, the study looked at whether an image you aren't aware of - but one that reaches the retina - has an impact on brain activity in the primary visual cortex, part of the occipital lobe.

Subjects' brains did respond to the object even when they were not conscious of having seen it. This research shows that when your brain doesn't have the capacity to pay attention to an image, even images that act on our subconscious simply do not get registered."

Dr. Bahador Bahrami, of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the UCL Department of Psychology, said: "What's interesting here is that your brain does log things that you aren't even aware of and can't ever become aware of”.

* This article is taken from “Science Daily”, an online scientific research publisher.

Subliminal Messages Reduce Shoplifting

In 1979 that nearly 50 department stores in the U.S. and Canada had been using subliminal messages over their music systems which had resulted in a significant reduction in both customer based shoplifting and employee theft.

One East Coast chain amounted savings of $600,000 over a nine-month period.

Another story in the Wall Street Journal in 1980 stated that subliminal messaging a New Orleans supermarket resulted in an all-time low within 6 months of use - from $50,000 per six month period to a figure of $13,000! Furthermore, cashier shortages dropped from $125 per week to below $10 per week.

* This article is taken from “Time Magazine”, a leading weekly American news magazine.

It seems apt to finish with a quote from Carl Jung - the founding father of modern psychology