Semi-Sweet Dreams: A Study of Human Perception

Overview

Objectives/Goals Our project aims to answer the question of whether or not subliminal messages affect people's thoughts. We want to determine how well the subliminal message affects a person's ability to perform on a multiple choice test of unknown facts. During the course of our project we would also like to find out whether or not gender makes a difference when testing the subliminal messages. Methods/Materials We made two tests with 25 random facts on both tests. We recorded the facts of both tests onto 2 separate CD's. We then selected 12 random test subjects, 6 boys and 6 girls. We took 3 boys and 3 girls and put them into a control group(group B). Then we took the other 3 boys and 3 girls and put them into a group that will be actually tested(group A). None of them were informed that there were any difference between their grouping. While sleeping, we played our first CD to test group A for 6 hours and only said we played the CD to test group B. We monitored every group for 6 hours during the night by 3 hour shifts in order to stop the CD if they awakened. In the morning, each test subject was given a glass of orange juice and then given the test. They were monitored during the test and not allowed to discuss answers. We then repeated the experiment following the same procedure, but switched the people in the 2 test groups. The people in test group A were put into group B and vice versa. Results At the conclusion of our experiment we found that there is no correlation between gender and the affect of the subliminal messages. We also concluded that sublinal messaging does have an affect on people's thoughts. The improvement between our control group and our test group in the 1st phase had an average of 6 points. In the 2nd phase we switched our test subjects and put them in opposite groups. The improvement between our 2 groups in the 2nd phase had an average of 7 points. Conclusions/Discussion We concluded from our ecperimentation that subliminal messages do effect people's thoughts and there is no correlation between gender.

Competition history

• CSEF 2003 Behavioral Sciences · Entry S0307

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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