Subliminal influencing in advertising: does it...

Subliminal influencing in advertising: does it work?

Eva Van den Bussche & Gigliola Brintazzoli

ULB 14-11-2012

10/10/2013 1Herhaling titel van presentatie

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Overview

• Can subliminal information influence our behavior…

• …in an experimental context? (PART I)

• …in a more real-life/advertising context? (PART II)

14-11-2012 2Seminar ULB

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Part I

Can subliminal information influence our behavior in an

experimental context?


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Early demonstrations

• Can subliminally presented information influence our behaviour?- Controversial

- Long history

- Subliminal = ideas below the “limen” or threshold for consciousness (Herbart, 1776-1841)


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• First empirical studies: Peirce & Jastrow(1884):

�Conclusion: even when claiming to be unaware of any difference (score=0), subjects could still discriminate the two pressures above chance level!

�See also Sidis (1898)


Pressure 1 Pressure 2Wich

pressurewas the

strongest?

Wichpressurewas the

strongest?

0 1 2 3 P1 P2

“No preference, nonsensical answer”forced-choice discrimination

task

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Masked priming paradigm

• Can subliminally presented information influence our behaviour?- Subliminal perception = a stimulus is demonstrated to be invisible while still influencing thoughts, feelings, actions, learning or memory (Kouider & Dehaene, 2007)

- How do we measure subliminal perception today?


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9


�Masked priming paradigm (Marcel, 1983)


Larger than 5Smaller than 5

17ms

33ms

480ms

##

6

##

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Congruent

condition

Incongruent

condition

Prime 6 1

Target 9 9

Both > 5

Faster RTs

One <, one > 5

Slower RTs

Difference (RT_I - RT_C) = priming effect

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• Mid-1990s: methodological improvements (Dehaene, Greenwald) � more reliable

masked priming paradigms

• From then on: numerous experimental studies using the masked priming paradigm

�Van den Bussche et al. (2009): meta-analysis


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Conclusion Part I

• Strong and robust subliminal priming effects across the experimental literature

• Subliminal information can influence our behavior… in an experimentalcontext!


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Part II

Can subliminal information influence our behavior in an real-life/advertising context?


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• Vicary (1957): subliminal messages “drink coca-cola”, “eat popcorn” �

increased product sales

• Enormous impact on public opinion:


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• Subliminal advertising was banned in many countries

• Vicary had falsified data

• Impact on public remained

• Subliminal advertising is still being used today � McDonald’s


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People’s perception

• Consumers:- are familiar with subliminal advertising (74-81%)

- believe it is being used (68-81%)

- believe it “works” (72%)

• Significant positive correlation with education

Zanot et al., 1983; Synodinos, 1988; Rogers & Smith, 1993


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• Questionnaire study (in prep):- Online (LimeSurvey)

- Dutch, English and Italian version

- General view on advertising

- Definition of “Unconscious influencing” (UI) in advertising

- Definition clear?

- 3 questions assessing perception on UI in an advertising situation


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Instructions

Some people believe that advertisers intentionally place an unconscious message in their advertisements. These messages are hidden, which means that your visual system cannot consciously perceive them. These messages are designed to influence our behavior, for example to persuade us to buy a product, outside our awareness.

An example of this is an experiment by Vicary in 1957. He showed people the messages “Drink Coca Cola” and “Eat popcorn” for a very short duration (a few milliseconds) during a movie. The movie-goers couldn’t consciously perceive these messages. The question then is whether this kind of messages can influence our consumer behavior (in the example: will these messages lead to an increase in Coca Cola and popcorn sales?).

An unconscious message is not something you don’t pay attention to, but a message that you really can’t see.

In the following questionnaire we want to measure people's perception on this kind of unconscious influencing. We want to study whether you think this kind of unconscious influencing is present in advertising and whether you think these kinds of unconscious messages influence our behavior.


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• N=677

• 66.9% female

• Mean age = 43 (range 18-86)

• 84% Belgian

• 20.5% student

• 54% at least 1 child

• 40% married, 20% single, 16% cohabiting

• 25% master, 25% prof. bach., 22% secondary school, 15% academic bach.

• 62% owns house, 78% owns car


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1. Do you think UI is being used in advertising?

2. Do you think people in general are susceptible to UI in advertising?

3. Do you think you are susceptible to UI in advertising?

Never _ Seldom _ Sometimes _ Often _ Always


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0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

Never Seldom Sometimes Often Always

Q1: used?

Q2: people?

Q3: you?

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• Participants believe that people in general are more susceptible to UI than they themselves (3.45 VS 2.86, t(637)=20.81, p< .001)

• Men VS women: men believe less that UI is being used (3.19 VS 3.37, p=.015), that people in general are susceptible to it (3.33 VS 3.50, p=.014) and especially that they themselves are susceptible to it (2.67 VS 2.96, p< .001).


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• Two-step cluster analysis: 3 clusters


1

1,5

2

2,5

3

3,5

4

4,5

Q1: used? Q2: people? Q3: you?

Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Cluster 3

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• Two-step cluster analysis: 3 clusters• Cluster 1 (N=244): Strong believers

• Cluster 2 (N=324): Conservative group

• Cluster 3 (N=70): Skeptics

• What determines cluster membership?


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• Gender: Strong believers = 74% female,

Conservative = 67% female, Skeptics = 47% female

• Other: skeptics are slightly younger than the

other 2 groups, have a smaller weekly budget, are less likely to own a car/house, are more often single or cohabiting


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• Differences in general beliefs about advertising:

• Conservatives think less that they are exposed to advertising. They try to avoid advertising less (e.g., lower score on “Switch channels during commercials”)

• Skeptics think less that they are influenced by advertising. They have a stronger sense of control (e.g., higher score on “I know when an offer is "too good to be

true”) and they are not afraid of advertising (e.g., lower score on “Advertising should be more closely regulated”)


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• Strong believers think more that they are influenced by advertising. They are more suspicious about it (e.g., higher scores on “Commercials try to make people buy things they don’t really need”)

• No clear effects of personality traits, materialism, net income, being a student or not and educational level


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• Conclusion:

• People believe UI in advertising is being used and that it is effective

• More skeptic about their own susceptibility

• Men are more skeptic

• Different groups of people can be identified based on their beliefs about UI (Strong believers, Conservatives and Skeptics)


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• Actual application of unconscious advertising:

- Rogers & Seiler (1994) questioned 256 American advertising companies about whether they had ever used UI

- 91% NO, 8% did not understand the concept of UI correctly, only 1 firm had used it “as a prank”


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• Conclusion:

• People believe UI is being used and they believe it works

• BUT: companies are not using it

� Discrepancy between the perception

of people and the actual use!


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Time-course of subliminal priming

• Still the question remains: does it work?

• Generalizing findings made in an exp context to a more real-life situation is problematic � time-course of

subliminal priming


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9


�Masked priming paradigm


Larger than 5Smaller than 5

17ms

33ms

480ms

##

6

##

SOA = 50ms

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• Exp context: subliminal info (prime) and behavior undergoing the influence of it (response to target) follow each other very closely in time

� prime exerts its influence almost

immediately

• Meta-analysis: average SOA = 128ms (max = 784ms)


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• Subliminal priming is short-lived!

• Priming drops to a non-significant value within a few hundreds of milliseconds (Forster & Davis, 1984; Greenwald et al., 1996; Ferrand, 1996)

�Casts serious doubt on its effectiveness in everyday life and advertising

�Subliminal info (an ad) and the behavior undergoing the influence of this info (buying the product) are much farther apart


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Pratkanis, 1992

Trappey, 1996

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Subliminal priming applied

• Still, some studies have successfully applied subliminal priming in more real-life contexts

• Karremans et al. (2006):

- Subliminally primed with “Lipton Ice” or “NpeicTol” (23ms + masked)

- Questions:- If you were offered a drink now, what would you prefer (Lipton Ice or Spa Rood)

- If you would sit on a terrace now, how likely is it that you would order Lipton Ice/Coca Cola/Spa Rood (scale 1-7)

- I would like to drink Lipton Ice/Coca Cola/Spa Rood at this moment (scale 1-7)


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• Karremans et al. (2006):

- Increased choice for, and intention to, drink Lipton Ice, but only for thirsty participants

- See also Strahan et al., 2002; Bermeitinger et al., 2009


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• Consumer choices can be influenced by subliminal primes that could help fulfill a need, but only if the consumer is already deprived!

- Veltkamp et al. (2011): even when no deprivation is present, subliminal conditioning can motivate consumers as if they were deprived

- Verwijmeren et al. (2011): subliminally priming an habitual brand has no effect, and a primed brand can lead to increased choice even at the expense of an habitual brand


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• Can we conclude that subliminal influencing in a real-life/advertising situation works?

• Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet…

• Methodological issues:

- Time-course: prime and target still quite close in time, laboratory context

- Prime awareness assessment


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Prime awareness

• Prime awareness assessment:

1. Subjective threshold � self-report (e.g.:

“Were you aware of the prime”)

2. Objective threshold � discriminative abilities � post-hoc post-test– Identification: identify the prime

– Forced choice absent/present: was there a prime?

– Forced choice categorization: classify the prime


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Prime awareness

• How “fast” will a method conclude that the primes were unconscious?1. Subjective report (Post-hoc)

2. Prime identification

3. Forced choice absent/present, forced choice categorization


Preferred! If a priming effect is observed AND the primes could not be perceived above chance, most strict evidence of truly unconscious/subliminal priming!

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Our approach

• Aim: examine whether subliminal influencing can be effectively and reliably implemented in more everyday life and advertising situations, using strict methodology

• New studies:1. Brintazzoli et al., 2012 (Con&Cog): real-life stimuli

2. Muscarella et al., (under revision): SOA


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1. Brintazzoli et al., 2012

• Idea = back to basics!

• Design an experiment very similar to a typical masked priming study

• BUT: with more real-life stimulus material


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• Stimuli• Typical masked priming experiment

• Primes = 10 very familiar brand logos �

selected in a pilot study

• Targets = letter strings

• Task: decide as fast as possible whether the target is a word (or brand name) or a nonsensical non-word

• 2 versions: conscious (17ms) or unconscious (13ms)


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• 5 conditionsa) related brand: - MCDONALD’S

b) unrelated brand: - LACOSTE

c) related non-brand: - HAMBURGER

d) unrelated non-brand: - CAR

e) non-word: - NOOLWEF

� 400 trials (50% word and 50% non-word)

� Only 200 word trials were analyzed


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Design:

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• Prime visibility• Objective forced choice categorization test

• Conscious version (N=39):

- Subjects correctly categorized 75% of the primes

- d’ =1.56, t(38)= 9.43, p< .001

• Unconscious version (N=32):


- d’ = 0.29, t(31)= 3.91, p< .001, no correlation with priming, no differences between highest and lowest d’ group


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• Results


**

**

480

490

500

510

520

530

540

550

brand non-brand brand non-brand

conscious unconscious

RT (

ms)

related

unrelated

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• Discussion

• Brand logos possess the power to prime their brand names and, remarkably, words associated to the brand

• primes “McDonald's”, but also “hamburger”!

• However, this only occurred when they were presented above the consciousness threshold!


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2. Muscarella et al., under rev.

• BUT…

• At prime level: 5 of the 10 primes DID trigger priming in the brand and non-brand condition!

� New study with only these 5 logos


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• Aim:

• Study more long-term effects of these logos on behavior

• E.g., Capa et al. (2011): long-term effects of goal-related words, but only when primes had been directly associated with visible positive words acting as a reward

• Manipulation of SOA: 334, 1000 or 5000ms (separate blocks)


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• Stimuli: only 5 logos

• Design = very similar


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• Prime visibility• Objective forced choice categorization test

• Conscious version (N=28):


- d’ =3.25, t(27)= 20.08, p< .001

• Unconscious version (N=24):


- d’ = 0.22, t(23)= 1.79, p= .087, no correlation with priming


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• Results


460

480

500

520

540

560

580

SOA

334

SOA

1000

SOA

5000

SOA

334

SOA

1000

SOA

5000

SOA

334

SOA

1000

SOA

5000

SOA

334

SOA

1000

SOA

5000

brand non-brand brand non-brand

conscious unconscious

related

unrelated

******

**

****

ns***

***

**

**

ns

ns

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• Discussion

• primes “McDonald's”, even when presented unconsciously and when 5s pass between prime and target

• primes “Hamburger”, even when presented unconsciously, but this spreading of activation to semantically related words is limited to shorter prime-target intervals, especially for unconscious primes.


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• Discussion

• Unconscious information can exert its influence on our behavior for at least 5 seconds after its presentation. However, the semantic network triggered by the information seems to decay rapidly over time.


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Conclusion Part II

• Unconscious real-life stimuli can elicit short-and long-term priming effects

• Necessity of a strict prime awareness assessment

• Quality of the primes = crucial

• However: still artificial/experimental setting, effects on low-level behavioral tasks

• Future studies: focus on decision-making, choice behavior


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Conclusion

• Can subliminal information influence our behavior…

• …in an experimental context? YES!

• …in a more real-life/advertising context? Could be???


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Contact

Eva Van den Bussche

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Department of Psychology

Pleinlaan 2

1050 Brussels

Belgium

[email protected]

http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~evdbussc//

14-11-2012 57SCAN Utrecht

Subliminal influencing in advertising: does it...

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