Derren Brown is a British “mentalist” and entertainer. He has a number of fascinating videos over on You Tube, including this classic – quite simply, the most persuasive illustration of nonconscious processing I have ever seen. When you click on the video below, you may have to follow the link over to You Tube to [...]
A really fascinating, and in several ways disturbing study crossed my desk a couple of weeks ago. Authored by Jennifer Harris, the legendary John Bargh, and Kelly Brownwell, the article is called “Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior”. It was published earlier this this year in Health Psychology. Abstract and [...]
The title of this post refers to a December 2007 article in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by psychologist Ran R. Hassin and colleagues, “Subliminal exposure to national flags affects political thought and behavior”. The full article is available here.
Unlike most academic article titles, this one says it all, thank you. [...]
I have written before in this blog about the the question of whether nonconscious processes need to be “protected” from stimuli that trigger them. The need for protection is derived from a belief that these processes are somehow more vulnerable than conscious processes, and further, that stimulating them can make us do things (specifically, buy [...]
I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about the influence of Vance Packard’s 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders, on journalistic accounts and public perceptions of the new “neuromarketing” field.
In 2007 there were a number of reviews and appreciations of The Hidden Persuaders written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its publication. I just finished reading a [...]
A thread that runs through quite a number of the journalistic treatments I read about neuroscience applied to commercial stimuli (like ads, products, and brands) is fear … fear of a “Manchurian Candidate” technique that will turn people into consuming robots, fear of privacy, fear of science being co-opted by greedy corporations at the expense [...]
Professor Marc Blitz has posted a lengthy but very thought-provoking article over at Neuroethics & Law Blog about whether the First Amendment should protect “subliminal messaging”. He does not come to any hard and fast conclusions, but in good lawyerly fashion examines various arguments for and against the influence of deliberate and inadvertent subliminal stimuli, [...]