Subliminal Priming

The term subliminal means below threshold i.e., subliminal stimulus is understood as a sensory stimulation that cannot be perceived by a person’s conscious mind. In the sense, this stimulus reaches the person unconsciously, and is perceived below their threshold. For instance, people are unable to report the presence of the word flashed quickly for a very few milliseconds, even though it has been picked by the human sensory system. (Cooper & Cooper, 2002). However, its complement is called supraliminal stimulus which means stimulation presented above a human’s threshold. It is presented in such a way that a person can perceive the stimuli consciously and can detect its presence. Factors like individual differences, needs, goals and context

These goals can be activated in an individual non-consciously by presenting the primes either supralimininally or subliminally (Chartrand & Bargh, 1996; Custers & Aarts, 2010). Need-related behaviours like thirst or hunger has been primary focus of the studies conducted on persuasion through goal priming. For instance, in a research carried out by Cooper and Cooper (2002), the duo activated the motivated state of thirst in the individuals who were presented the subliminal stimuli related to thirst like pictures of Coca Cola cans and sweating boxers, the word “thirsty” all implanted in an episode of The Simpsons. Following the manipulation, the thirst ratings of the subjects were significantly higher as compared to the control condition. The idea that a message is perceived more persuasive when it correlates to the active need or mood was presented by Strahan, Spencer, and Zanna (2002). Thus for thirsty subjects whose active need is to quench thirst, a relevant advertisement could be more persuasive if it co-occurs with subliminal messages of thirst related words or picture. Similarly, Karremans, Stroebe, and Claus (2006) carried out an experiment which demonstrates the same idea. They exposed the thirsty subjects to the subliminal priming of the brand ‘Lipton Ice’ and demonstrated that it affected subject’s choice as well as purpose to

For instance, Bargh and colleagues, in an experiment, presented the subjects with subliminal images of African-Americans, and the experimenter made an unreasonable request. Consequently the participants displayed aggressive behaviour in comparison to the ones exposed to images of Caucasians. The rationale drawn out to explain this behaviour was that African-Americans are stereotyped to be more aggressive in nature than Caucasians. Hence, subliminal exposure of the stimuli, activated the stereotypical perception associated with that stimuli thereby influencing the social judgement of the individuals, subsequently impacting their behaviour (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows,