Subliminal Appeals

Subliminal stimulation has become one of the more popular advertising-related topics for students and lay-people. Popularized by Wilson Bryan Key's book, Subliminal Seduction (1973), this subject has captured the imagination of people everywhere.

The term "subliminal" means "below the limen," or below the threshold of consciousness. The idea is that certain things are heard, seen, or felt, that never reach our conscious thought processes, and that those things may still be recorded somewhere in our mind and have an impact on our decisions and behavior. Key argued that advertising professionals use this concept to hide images within advertisements, and that these images manipulate our behavior without our even realizing we have seen them.

Key uses the term "subliminal perception," which is something of a misnomer, since perception implies conscious awareness. Psychologists have studied this phenomenon since the late 1800s, and originally called it "subception." However, while this is a real psychological phenomenon, all research on this topic indicates that subliminal stimulation is incapable of affecting our purchasing behavior, contrary to the allegations of Key.

While this is a fun topic of discussion, there is no evidence that advertisers embed hidden images in advertisements, and there is ample evidence that such efforts would be a waste of time.