Subliminal negativity may prove effective !

In 1957 James Vicary a marketing researcher coined the term subliminal advertising. Subliminal meaning approximately under the threshold. Vicary is also the man of “Eat Popcorn”,” drink Coca Cola” and "Hungry?" planted-in-the-movie-frames fame to boost sales .Years later he admitted that it was a marketing ploy for his Subliminal Projection company .Rumors, conspiracy theories and urban legends still surround subliminal advertising but some truth to the theory appears in a recent study .However in a manner of speaking the results are mostly negative. The study's author claims the results show conclusively that people can perceive the emotional value of subliminal messages and people are much more attuned to negative words .So don’t eat popcorn, don’t drink Coca Cola and not hungry ? may be the pitch in the subliminal. Nah,No way.

The Journal Emotion publisheda study which provides evidence that people are able to process emotional information from subliminal images and demonstrates conclusively that even under such conditions, information of negative value is better detected than information of positive value.

In the study, Professor Nilli Lavie and colleagues showed fifty participants a series of words on a computer screen. Each word appeared on-screen for only a fraction of second – at times only a fiftieth of a second, much too fast for the participants to consciously read the word. The words were either positive (e.g. cheerful, flower and peace), negative (e.g. agony, despair and murder) or neutral (e.g. box, ear or kettle). After each word, participants were asked to choose whether the word was neutral or 'emotional' (i.e. positive or negative), and how confident they were of their decision.
The researchers found that the participants answered most accurately when responding to negative words – even when they believed they were merely guessing the answer.
Professor Lavie believes the research may have implications for the use of subliminal marketing to convey messages, both for advertising and public service announcements such as safety campaigns.

"Negative words may have more of a rapid impact," she explains. "'Kill your speed' should be more noticeable than 'Slow down'.More controversially, highlighting a competitor's negative qualities may work on a subliminal level much more effectively than shouting about your own selling points."

So remember don’t buy popcorn