Subliminal effects of verbal stimuli.

Abstract

MPLOYING a technique of exposing subliminal forms followed immediately by supraliminal forms, two early experiments have suggested that subliminal forms measurably affect conscious perception. Smith and Henriksson (1955) have reported that when a fan-shaped array of lines was shown subliminally and followed by a clearly perceptible square, the square becomes more trapezoidal, a change consistent with the usual illusion that appears when a square is seen against a fanshaped background. Klein, Spence, Holt, and Gourevitch (1958) found that different sexual and symbolic figures exposed subliminally provoked different impressions of consciously perceived pictures of people. For example, drawings of ambiguous human figures seemed more masculine when they followed a subliminal male symbol than when they followed a female symbol in another session. However, it was not certain that the meaning of the subliminal figures was solely responsible for these effects since the symbols differed markedly also in shape. Another experiment seemed necessary to test the decisive importance of meaning alone as a subliminal influence upon conscious thought, using stimuli that differed minimally in contour and maximally in meaning.Words possessing a core of self-consistent, commonly accepted social meanings, but unequivocally different from each other (e.g., ANGRY and HAPPY) meet this requirement. Through the use of words similar in size and printed in capitals, it is possible to present widely different meanings with relatively minimal variation in contour, and to test for the 1 This study was carried out under a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. Patients of Manhattan VA Hospital served as 5s and we are grateful to -Bernard .Locke, Chief Psychologist, Manhattan VA Hospital, for generously helping to make available the hospital's facilities.

Affect, cognition, and awareness: Affective priming with optimal and suboptimal stimulus exposures.

“…This pattern of results replicates the somewhat anomalous results of earlier researchers (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986;Silverman & Weinberger, 1985;Smith, Spence, & Klein, 1959) in that the magnitude of the priming effect was inversely related to the length of exposure to the primes, with only suboptimal exposures producing any significant effects.…”

Some Comments and Data on the Partial Cue Controversy and other Matters Relevant to Investigations of Subliminal Phenomena

“…This point was made emphatically by Spence and Holland (1962) and it is odd that Guthrie and Wiener fail to mention it in their paper. Spence and Holland first note that in four earlier studies (Smith, Spence, & Klein, 1959;Paul & Fisher, 1959;Eagle, 1959;Lapkin & Lippmann, 1958) there is some evidence supporting the view that partial cues can interfere with a subliminal effect. They then prod~~ce rather convincing evidence of their own by carrying out an experiment designed to compare reactions to the structure of a stimulus with reactions to its meaning.…”

The Implications of Conceptual Critiques and Empirical Research on Unconscious Processes for Psychoanalytic Theory

“…For example, in one early study the words HAPPY and ANGRY (the A-stimuli) were presented subliminally and immediately followed by a supraliminal neutral face (the Bstimulus). The results showed that the A-stimuli diferentially influenced responses to the B-stimulus in accord with the meanings of "happy" and "angry," indicating that, although not consciously perceived, the A-stimuli were encoded at the level of semantic meaning (Smith, Spence, & Klein, 1959).…”

“…During the 1950s and 1960s a number of studies on the question of degree of awareness and attention and stimulus organization were carried out at the New York University Research Center for Mental Health (e.g., Eagle, 1959;Eagle & Ortof, 1967;Eagle, Wolitzky, & Klein, 1966;Klein, Spence, Holt, & Gourevitch, 1958;Paul & Fisher, 1959;Pine 1960Pine , 1961Smith et al, 1959;Spence & Holland, 1962). Among the findings reported were the following: Compared to focal stimuli, incidental stimuli influenced subjects' subsequent imaginative stories in accord with the latter's symbolic meanings (Pine, 1960).…”