Subliminal stimuli can facilitate conscious processing of related information ( Van den Bussche et al., 2009), change our current mood ( Monahan et al., 2000), boost our motivation ( Aarts et al., 2008), and can even alter our political attitudes and voting intentions ( Hassin et al., 2007 Weinberger and Westen, 2008). Subliminal messages exert diverse influences on our thoughts and our behavior ( van Gaal et al., 2012 Hassin, 2013). This is unprecedented evidence of the longevity and impact of subliminal messages on conscious, rational decision-making. Subliminal influence did not significantly decay if probed after 25 versus 15 min. In experiment 2, subliminal presentation of vocabulary of a foreign language enabled participants to later decide whether these foreign words are presented with correct or incorrect translations. In experiment 1, subliminal face–occupation pairs affected conscious decisions about the income of these individuals almost half an hour later. Here, we hypothesized that subliminally presented stimulus pairs would be relationally processed influencing the direction of delayed conscious decisions. Relational binding engages the hippocampal memory system, which can rapidly encode and durably store novel relations. We speculated that subliminal messages might affect delayed decision-making especially if messages contain several pieces of novel information that must be relationally bound in long-term memory. These studies suggest that subliminal messages are only slowly stored and might not be stored at all if they provide novel, unfamiliar information. So far, subliminal long-term effects on behavior were only observed in studies which repeatedly presented highly familiar information such as single words. Subliminal manipulation is often considered harmless because its effects typically decay within a second.

Subliminal messages psychology meaning