RipOff or not? Subliminal Messaging Computer Software - flashes subliminal messages on your screen.

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A co-worker mentioned something like this a few years ago, and I was intrigued, but never followed up on it. Now I'm curious again. Here are a couple of sites:

What do you think?

Here's one:

Self-help Subliminals is a special computer program that enables you to display your own subliminal messages and use them to change your life. Use it while at work or while playing games.

You use the subliminal program to display your own positive affirmations subliminally in word or picture form. You are in total control of the messages which are displayed and how the messages are displayed.

Subliminal messages are messages which are displayed for such a short period of time that your mind does not consciously register what it sees. Instead your mind registers it sub-consciously. This means that your conscious mind cannot form arguments against the ideas and so you are more susceptible to the subliminal idea.

While there is much controversy about subliminal advertising and using subliminal messages without willing subjects, Self-help Subliminals lets you decide what subliminal messages to give to yourself. The messages and ideas which you want to put into your sub-conscious are controlled by you and you alone.

http://www.infinn.com/subliminal.html


And another, more polished and slick website:

http://www.subliminal-power.com/mind/?pu=false


Think this is worth looking into as a means of self-improvement?

[Duer 157099]

1. I've tried it in the past and I believe it works

Just make sure you can control the message, lol.

[NYC_SKP]

2. What if what you're trying to do is to spend less time on the computer?

I see a problem there. :P

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7. rofl...

:rofl:

[RandomThoughts]

3. Maybe that might explain why everyone was replacing the

word country, with company, back in 2003. Tv news was doing it, Rumsfield, and Bush, and many other people were doing it by accident, even saw it in person in real life.

That had to be a wide spread subliminal.

Although it is hard to imagine that they could do it without someone catching on, since digital information leaves a trail, but they could do it selectively to some TVs and Computers with Cable and ISPs

I have thought that one of Bush's programs might be taking a certain segment of population and giving them different TV or Internet information. Subliminals could fit in that also.


In 2004 one of the advertisements against John Kerry during the presidential run had a subliminal in it, the news caught it and even ran a story of it. It was a single frame of a guy holding a really ugly squid.

[rucky]

4. If you're in control of the messages, wouldn't they be bliminal?

[customerserviceguy]

10. No

that would be liminal. Sub-liminal is under the lim.

In any case, sounds like bullshit to me ever since I learned about this in Psych 101 many years ago. But who knows, maybe it works on weak minds, like religious people?

[Catshrink]

5. I set up a trial...

so far I just see a flash on the screen. I'm not sure how that's going to work. If it just flashed and I don't have time to process what it says, will that be effective?

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8. Supposedly, that's the whole point. You're not supposed to be conciously able to see the messages.

They supposedly enter the mind just below the conscious level.

[TlalocW]

6. I don't believe subliminal messages work

There have been studies that show it's a bunch of hoo-ha.

TlalocW

[LooseWilly]

9. See, life does imitate art- specifically Fight Club in this case.

(warning... case #5 is explicit... and exactly my point)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVv1Oh_cC-E

Will the company set up subliminal shots of huge cocks for me, so that my mind will learn that I should be better endowed? That would be splendid, it would... hmm

[Ian David]

11. Subliminal Seduction

Subliminal Seduction
Skeptoid #63
August 28, 2007
Podcast transcript

<snip>

Right around the time that Packard's original book was published, a market research consultant named James Vicary set up a special projector inside a movie theater in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Over the course of six weeks, he chose certain showings of the film Picnic and throughout those showings, he flashed certain marketing messages onto the screen for .003 seconds (well below the perceptual threshhold), and kept doing it every five seconds through the entire movie. In all, 45,699 customers watched Vicary's movies. The messages said "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat Popcorn". The result? During movies when Vicary flashed his messages, sales of Coca-Cola rose by an average of 18%, and sales of popcorn rose by 58%.

And so there it was. Since that famous experiment, subliminal messages flashed on TV and movie screens have been a firm fixture in popular culture. Hardly a single student who takes a class on psychology or advertising will escape hearing about it and believing wholeheartedly in the effectiveness of subliminal messaging. The media had a heyday with the sensational headlines, and the rest is history.

Harcourt Assessment, which was known at the time as The Psychological Corporation, invited Vicary to repeat his experiment under controlled conditions. He did, but this time no increases in sales were shown at all. Pressed for an explanation, Vicary confessed that he had falsified the results from his original study. Indeed, five years later in a 1962 interview with Advertising Age, Vicary revealed that he had never even conducted the Fort Lee experiment at all. He had literally made up the entire thing. But of course, by then, it was too late. The headlines had run their course, and to this day it's a generally accepted fact that flashing brief messages onscreen produces a desired behavior, despite the fact it never happened.

Is there any evidence that subliminal messages or hidden sexual imagery produces higher sales? Evidently, no. At least, I couldn't find any. However I did find one relevant study from 2007, from the University of California Davis. The findings, surprisingly, were that subliminal sexual images had no effect on men, and actually produced lower levels of sexual arousal in women. Neither group went out and bought popcorn or Pepsi. The conclusion suggests "that the subliminal sexual prime causes women to activate sex-related mental contents but to experience the result as somewhat aversive." Not really a great advertising strategy.

More:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4063

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13. But here's the thing - are we not what we think? If you tell yourself repeatedly that your clumsy,

don't you tend to be more clumsy?

On the other end of the spectrum, if you tell yourself repeatedly that you are confident, don't you exhibit a greater confidence in yourself?

I know that in sales, when I go to work convinced I will have a banner day, I usually do.

I know that I can go to bed without an alarm clock set and tell myself as I drift off, "wake up at 9, wake up at 9" and invariably, I wake up at 9.

The subconsious mind seems to have a power to deliver what it is programmed to deliver, to some extent.

The question then is, can subliminal messages tap the power of the subconsious mind?

[Ian David]

14. No. n/t

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15. Maybe? n/t

:)

[REP]

12. I believe the only message that ever registered was "Mommy and I are one"

And if I recall correctly, even that was doubtful.