The Effectiveness of Audible Subliminal Messaging

Overview

Subliminal messages are methods to subconsciously alter the perceptions of individuals. We were intent on investigating the effectiveness of subliminals; to accomplish this, we chose an instrumental audio and used text-to-speech to embed a continuous word within it. Moreover, we included a control which did not include a message, and tested 120 individuals overall. Our subjects listened to this minute long audio with headphones and proceeded to pick one of our four gum containers with a word printed on it. These four words, chanving, kastat, sevit, and rawey, were improvised to avoid biases. After our investigation, we concluded that our subliminal audio had, indeed, influenced our subject’s selections. Our target word was chanving and over 45% more people chose our target word after listening to the subliminal audio. Other aspects we observed were the correlations in gender and age, and we presumed that the number of female and male influences occurred at the same rate. On the contrary, the results between the different decades of age demonstrated that those over 39 were more vulnerable compared to the younger generations. From this, we inferred that subliminal messages could impact one’s short-term decisions because subjects who listened to our message indicated persuasion towards our fabricated brand. The prospect of subliminal messages has the potential to aid our society in settings where they can consensually broadcast affirming messages that can accelerate the speed of recovery of those in medical or rehabilitation centers. Henceforth, we will test different methods of subliminal messaging like visuals.

Competition history

• ISEF 2022 Behavioral and Social Sciences · Entry BEHA029T · Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Resources

• ISEF abstract page ↗

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