Hidden Minds (29 page)

Leading Democrats immediately accused the Republicans of foul play. The producer of the Republican advert, Alex Castellanos, claimed that the very brief appearances of the word rats was ‘purely accidental’; however, a commentator familiar with Castellanos and his work stated: ‘There is no way anything Alex Castellanos does is an accident’. In an atmosphere of increasing discontent and suspicion, Bush was forced to withdraw the advert.

Opinion polls prior to the 2000 presidential election predicted that the result might be very close. The eventual outcome, of course, confirmed these predictions, when, controversially, the Florida ballots had to be recounted. It is not entirely implausible to suggest that some Republican advisors had come to the conclusion that if the election could not be won by presenting evidence to the conscious mind, then it might be worth presenting evidence to the unconscious mind. With the polls showing equal support for both party leaders, the unconscious emerged as an additional, shadowy constituency.

Although Castellanos’ advert produced a flurry of media interest, the stir he created pales into insignificance when compared with the furore generated by the now infamous subliminal scandal ofthe 1950s. A marketing executive in New Jersey reported that he had superimposed messages on a cinema film reel. These messages appeared so briefly that they escaped conscious detection. Thus, cinemagoers were urged – subliminally – to ‘Eat popcorn’ or ‘Drink Coke’. When the adulterated reel was shown, popcorn sales rose by 58 per cent, and Coke sales by 18 per cent.

The subsequent debate was sufficiently heated and widespread to have repercussions beyond the world of advertising. Very swiftly, academic research into subliminal perception acquired a sinister connotation, and research into preconscious processing was all but abandoned in ‘respectable’ university departments. Overnight the motives of those with a scientific interest in the unconscious became highly suspect.

Curiously, it may be that research into preconscious processing suffered a serious setback for no good reason. Those involved in the original New Jersey study later announced that the whole thing was nothing more than an elaborate hoax; however, even today it is still unclear what actually happened. Indeed, conspiracy theorists dismiss the disclaimer as a transparent attempt to muddy the waters.

Irrespective of the legitimacy of the original study, the idea that subliminal messages could be used to modify behaviour continued to attract interest in certain quarters. For example, several department stores were rumoured to be using subliminal messages to successfully reduce theft. By embedding messages such as ‘If you steal, you’ll get caught’ in continuous background Muzak, shoplifting rates were allegedly reduced.

The idea of subliminal manipulation (in the form of subliminal advertising or policing) has had an enduring impact on public opinion. Even though the subliminal scandal ofthe 1950s occurred in the middle ofthe last century, the concept of subliminal advertising has achieved a remarkable degree of cultural penetration. Most people are familiar with the concept and express appropriate concern when any group – be they a commercial or political organisation – is suspected of employing subliminal messages or instructions. The thought of strangers surreptitiously tampering with our unconscious minds arouses instant anger and resentment.

The issue of subliminal manipulation was considered of sufficient importance to be mentioned in the practice guidelines prepared in conjunction with the 1990 British Broadcasting Act. The Independent Television Commission -who regulate commercial broadcasting-were required to draw up and enforce a code governing standards and practice in TV advertising. It contains the following:

A few years after the British Broadcasting Act entered the statutes, the British Psychological Society (BPS) published an official report titled
Subliminal Messages.
The report was compiled largely in response to the sudden appearance of commercially available audio tapes that were supposed to contain improving or healing subliminal messages; however, the content of the report also touched upon more general issues surrounding subliminal manipulation and the unconscious.

The scientific affairs board of the BPS were extremely conservative with respect to their conclusions. Readers were assured that the subliminal advertising scandal in the 1950s was indeed a hoax, that messages ofthe kind used by Judas Priest on
Stained Class
could not affect listeners, that commercially available tapes promising self-improvement or treatment with subliminal messages did not work, and that it is impossible to learn anything in the absence of awareness (as, for example, during sleep). The report did not question the reality of subliminal perception; however, it suggested that the consequences of subliminal stimulation were at best, fragile and transient. Moreover, readers were reminded that although the brain is capable of processing information outside of awareness, this in itself does not necessarily warrant endorsement of the traditional distinction between conscious and unconscious divisions of mind.

The BPS report is unsensational. Moreover, there is much to be said for restraint in the context of an official scientific report; however, it is possible that the very conservative conclusions reached by the scientific affairs board erred too far on the side of caution. It is indeed true that the evidence for subliminal influence is not universally compelling. Nevertheless, there are many studies in the literature that have yielded positive and impressive results. Therefore, a general statement to the effect that – at best – subliminal stimulation can only ever produce very weak effects may be premature.

With respect to subliminal advertising, conservative commentators maintain that far too much has been made of scandal and hearsay. Moreover, debate over alleged cases of subliminal advertising is entirely sterile, because, quite simply, subliminal advertising doesn’t work. But again, such confident assertions might be mistaken.

Polarised opinions are rarely accurate. Claims that subliminal advertising always or never works are very probably both wrong. A much more enlightened approach is to evaluate the effects of subliminal stimulation in a broader context of mediating factors – a point acknowledged by John Kihlstrom in his much-lauded 1987 paper ‘The cognitive unconscious’.

Kihlstrom suggests that subliminal instructions might trigger the equivalent of automatic programmes stored in the unconscious. Thus, once triggered, these might influence how consumers think about products, and their subsequent purchasing behaviour. Moreover, subliminal messages may be particularly effective because they obviate the possibility of conscious inhibition. The activation of programmes in the unconscious translates directly into thought or behaviour, unimpeded by self-reflection and careful judgement; however, by the same token, other factors will serve to moderate the potency of subliminal messages.

According to Kihlstrom, subliminal effects are caused by a process described by cognitive psychologists as
priming.
When a subliminal message is presented, corresponding knowledge in the unconscious is activated by the subliminal stimulus. To use a thermal analogy, subliminal presentation of a word such as ‘popcorn’ will ‘warm up’ knowledge directly related to ‘popcorn’ (for example what it looks like, its texture, its taste). Moreover, a little heat might also spread to knowledge that is indirectly related to the concept of popcorn (for example memories of other types of food). The academic literature on spreading activation suggests that priming effects are very short lived. Thus, activation may dissipate as fast as it spreads. This would mean that a subliminal advert might get an individual to think of popcorn for a few moments, but not much more. Moreover, such an individual might not be prompted to think of popcorn for long enough to inspire a subsequent purchase.

Even so, Kihlstrom adds that subliminal priming might serve to amplify (or at least direct) a pre-existing tendency. Thus, if an individual is hungry and he or she receives a svibliminal presentation ofthe word popcorn, it is conceivable that he or she might then begin to desire popcorn; however, if such an individual was not hungry in the first place, subliminal presentation of the word popcorn would probably have little or no effect.

Few people would defend subliminal advertising. !t is clearly a cynical, manipulative, and unethical activity; however, after the subliminal scandal of the 1950s, a small number of psychologists were left feeling that some important areas of research had been abandoned. Moreover, the brouhaha surrounding subliminal advertising had produced an intellectual climate in which disinterested discussion could not take place. It seemed that any attempt to exploit the unconscious was automatically considered wrong.

But was this the correct view? Some were concerned that an opportunity was being missed.

If subliminal stimulation of the unconscious was indeed an effective means of producing behavioural change, could the same technique not be used more responsibly – for example to reduce human suffering in the context of mental illness?

The unconscious has been given considerable emphasis in many accounts of mental illness. Although the unconscious is traditionally associated with psychoanalysis, virtually all schools of psychotherapy acknowledge the unconscious in one form or another. Even behaviour therapy, which eschews mentalism in favour of observable behaviour, implicitly recognises unconscious mechanisms in the form of automatic reflexes and conditioned responses. In the context of behaviourism, the conscious, rational mind can do little to moderate phobic anxiety. The acquisition and extinction of fears is governed by processes that operate outside of awareness.

Historically the unconscious has always been linked with the now largely obsolete diagnosis of hysteria; however, when Freud turned his attention to neurotic illness (it was he who coined the term ‘anxiety neurosis’), the unconscious was again recruited to explain irrational fears. Many decades later, after the advent of information processing models of mind, the unconscious was used yet again to explain psychotic phenomena such as hallucinations. It was suggested that in problems such as schizophrenia the filter that regulates the passage of information between conscious and unconscious divisions of the mind is damaged, permitting the products of preconscious processing to enter awareness as auditory and visual hallucinations.

The unconscious, however conceptualised, has rarely occupied anything less than a central position in psycho pathology; however, there can be little doubt that the link that Freud forged between his particular view of mental illness and the unconscious has proved the strongest.

Psychoanalysis attempts to discover the unconscious roots of psy-chopathology. Using methods such as free association, dream interpretation, and examination of slips and errors, the analyst gains access to memories and wishes that have been pushed out of awareness. In this sense, the entire endeavour of psychotherapy seeks to ‘use’ the unconscious.

In psychoanalytic therapy, knowledge of the unconscious confirms theory, informs diagnosis, and facilitates treatment. But therapy can be a protracted process and psychotherapists soon sought to achieve these same ends more swiftly. Freud famously described the interpretation of dreams as the ‘royal road’ to the unconscious. His followers, however, wanted a freeway.

The first ‘artificial’ method devised to gain more ready access to unconscious material was the Rorschach test, first published in 1921, which consists often symmetrical ink blots (five in black and white and five introducing colour).

The Rorschach test is described by psychologists as a projective test. All projective tests work on the same principle. Typically, an ambiguous stimulus is presented to a patient who then describes his or her understanding of what he or she is seeing. Because the stimulus is intentionally meaningless or ambiguous, the patient’s response represents a ‘projection’. The patient is seeing something that isn’t really there. Thus, the response the patient gives tells the therapist something about the patient’s state of mind. Moreover, because the task is relatively innocuous, the unconscious can be ‘tricked’ into making disclosures. In the same way that the content of the unconscious can be adduced from slips ofthe tongue and descriptions of dreams, so it is that observations of ambiguous pictures can also be very revealing. Projective tests are a little like magic mirrors. When held up to the mind, they reflect areas of shadow rather than light.

Although the Rorschach ink-blot test is the most famous of all psychological tests, it is also the most maligned. There are many psychologists and psychiatrists who believe that administering the Rorschach test is a largely pointless exercise. Nothing of clinical significance, they argue, can be gained by asking a patient to divine forms in an ink-blot. There may be a kernel of truth in this, yet the Rorschach test continues to attract many advocates. Academic study of the Rorschach test is encouraged by the International Rorschach Society, and an entire journal – the exotic-sounding
Rorschachiana
– is regularly filled with relevant articles. Recently a computerised version of the test was developed, thus securing its presence in the clinics of the twenty-first century.