Use this discussion to guide students toward the following framework:ġ. Highlight for students the range of ways in which so-called subliminal influence is being attempted in their examples, and ask them to consider what would need to happen for this influence to succeed.

Assuming the message is real / intentional, what is the goal of the message? (e.g., to buy a specific product).

What sensory modality(ies) are involved (sight, sound, etc.)?.

What is the subliminal message? (e.g., a specific word, phrase, or image).For each example, ask students the following: Have students share some of their examples of attempts at subliminal influence depending on your class size, this could be done in small groups or as a whole class activity. Goals: To help students break down the claim that we can be influenced subliminally and to begin critically thinking through evidence about the possibility of subliminal perception. Also ask students to read (or review) basic information (in the textbook or elsewhere) on the differences between sensation and perception, top-down versus bottom-up processing, and automatic versus effortful or controlled processing. Many of these may have been mentioned already – the students’ job is to try to find actual examples of songs, video clips, images, and so on. Tell students that, as homework, they should find examples of attempts at subliminal influence. Tell students that in the next unit, you will be exploring questions about what subliminal influence is, if and how it can be studied scientifically, and the extent to which we know the answer to questions about whether subliminal influence is real. advertising designed to get people to go buy products.Examples students might generate and/or that you might ask about include subliminal messages in: At this point, don’t distinguish between perception and persuasion just elicit from students everything they’ve heard. DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.05.006Īsk students what they’ve heard about subliminal perception and subliminal persuasion. Current Opinion in Psychology, 12, 49 – 52. Awareness of the prime versus awareness of its influence: Implications for real-world scope of unconscious higher mental processes.

An accessible review of relevant research: Bargh, J.Nick Kolenda’s website, which provides clear, evidence-based explanations of relevant phenomena:.However, instructors should be aware of and prepared to discuss this distinction.Įxcellent resources for instructors to use in preparing for this unit include: Students are unlikely to make this distinction early on and are likely instead to be focused on sensationalized examples of truly subliminal influence. Bargh and others argue that this latter unawareness still represents “unconscious” influence of the priming stimuli. In many priming studies, for example, individuals are consciously aware of the prime, but are nonetheless unaware of the ways in which the prime affects their subsequent cognition, affect, or behavior. Note that many scholars (most recently Bargh, 2016) have highlighted the distinction between (a) being unaware of stimuli being present at all (e.g., those presented subliminally) and (b) being unaware of the effects of stimuli. This unit is structured to get students to think critically about the claim, the kinds of evidence that would support or refute it, and the underlying psychological mechanisms that would be necessary for the claim to be true. It is relevant to students’ daily lives and provides opportunities to discuss applied research in social psychology, behavioral economics, and marketing. Discussion of this myth provides rich opportunities to integrate topics across research methods, memory, cognition, sensation and perception, and social psychology. This is a topic that is almost certain to interest students, and one that is ripe for discussion in an introductory psychology class, because the truth behind the claim is complicated.

Subliminal definition