June 16, 2025

Snika Gupta

11th Grade

Brooklyn Technical High School

Introduction 

Subliminal messages are messages that are perceived by the brain but not consciously perceived by us. This occurs because the subliminal stimulus is not enough for the brain to direct its attention to it consciously. These visual cues happen too quickly for conscious recognition, or the audio cues are too quiet and muffled for it.  

Response and Way of Processing

The initial sensory processing occurs in the sensory organs, the eyes and ears, in the same way as other stimuli. Then sensory processing is passed to the thalamus, which filters and indicates the proportion of sensory inputs to determine war need to be passed on to other brain regions for further processing. The subliminal stimuli are not concourse processed, which means we do not know what we perceive them. Some of the subconscious stimuli skip the primary brain structures (amygdala or basal ganglia) and activate them directly. Subliminal messaging captures attention subconsciously so that the brain can focus on other information consciously.

Subliminal stimuli can also cause implicit memory formation. This is when, though the person cannot remember the stimuli, the brain saves and stores the information received from the stimuli for later, affecting future behavior and decisions. Another effect of subliminal messaging is priming, or preparing the brain for similar conscious situations. This can also lead to further influence in decision-making that the person is not aware of. 

While these effects may seem large, the subliminal messaging typically only affects the person for a second. Only long-term effects on behavior are seen when the information is heavily repeated and already familiar. However, we can see how it affects decision-making. Subliminal messaging most commonly affects nonconscious decision making.  A Swedish study found that it seems to affect conscious decisions for about 30 minutes after the subliminal stimulation. 

Effects of Auditory Subliminal 

The effect of auditory subliminal messaging is debated largely unobserved. The placebo effect was observed in a 2011 study on the effects of auditory subliminal on self-esteem. This supported previous studies, which showed that the messaging had no significant effect on boosting self-esteem compared to the music without messaging. Though there are some discrepancies compared to other studies, the researchers attributed this to the fact that there is no way to guarantee unconscious processing.

Visual 

While one may wonder how your eyes perceive stimuli and you don’t register it, how can it be perceived? When viewing an image, the brain keeps a footprint of the stimulus even when the messaging is quick. So the speed usually stops the brain from keeping the image. If a nonsense image is shown afterward, the initial image stays in the brain even longer. This is called visual masking. This happens because the visual stimulation is hidden under the threshold for conscious understanding. Complex and obvious messaging is still perceived as well. Many effects of subliminal messaging are referred to as priming.

Subconscious Ads

Ads using subliminal messaging have been a hot topic; they are meant to influence consumer decisions. It has been observed that the advertising is goal relevant, meaning that with earlier influence or attitude supporting the ad's goal, it is able to affect consumer choices. These priming effects are meant to engage the people watching. However, if people are aware of the effects of the messaging, its effects are distributed. So, if the customers are suspicious of the influence, the adverts are unlikely to work.