The Effect of Visual Subliminal Messages on Viewers' Color Choice

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this experiment was to determine whether visual subliminal messages have any effect on viewers' color choice. Methods/Materials Three copies were made of a video clip. One clip was left alone, a red rectangle was inserted into one clip after every 10 seconds of video, and the word "RED" was inserted into the other clip after every 10 seconds of video. A website was created that consisted of a homepage that informed the participant of what he or she would be doing and had links to each video, a page that played the video and then redirected the participant to a form where the participant selected one of five colors and entered his or her demographic information, and a thank you page that explained the entire experiment to the participant and invited him or her to tell others to visit the website. Results As of this writing, of the 159 participants who watched the plain video, 73 selected blue, 9 selected white, 25 selected black, 23 selected red, and 29 selected green. Of the 171 participants who watched the video with a red box inserted into it, 71 selected blue, 11selected white, 17 selected black, 41 selected red, and 31 selected green. Of the 124 participants who watched the video with the word "RED" inserted into it, 38 selected blue, 13 selected white, 13 selected black, 47 selected red, and 13 selected green. Conclusions/Discussion It was concluded that visual subliminal messages do have an effect on viewers' color choice. It was also found that visual subliminal messages containing words can be more effective than subliminal messages containing colors.

Awards (1)

• Category Award

Competition history

• CSEF 2006 Behavioral Sciences · Entry S0313

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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