Conspiracy theorists have often expressed fear that the government or other powerful conglomerates interested in controlling public behavior may use subliminal messages in television and radio to motivate people to act and respond in certain ways, such as voting for a specific presidential candidate or buying a specific brand of clothing. Are these concerns justified? Can our behavior be instigated and controlled by nefarious forces through subconscious priming? Recent research conducted by Dutch researcher Martijn Veltkamp suggests that behavior can indeed be modified subliminally but that these covert manipulations are only successful if the primed behavior supplies a biological need and is associated with a positive effect. In one experiment, Veltkamp deprived participants of water thereby making them thirsty. Some of these participants were allowed to eat a cucumber to alleviate (but not attenuate) their thirst. They were then exposed to the experimental stimuli which consisted of the words ‘drinking’ and ‘thirsty’ flashing briefly on a computer screen fast enough that they could not have been consciously perceived by participants (this procedure is known as ‘priming’). Afterwards, he measured their desire to drink a glass of water after the completion of the study. Interestingly, Veltkamp found that participants who had eaten a cucumber were more likely to drink a glass of water than their equally deprived counterparts who had not eaten a cucumber and a control group. His reasoning argues that the subliminal messaging influenced participants’ behavior to drink the glass of water but had a greater subconscious effect on the participants who had eaten the cucumber because the priming encouraged a behavior that met a biological need – thirst – and was associated with a positive stimulus – the eating of the cucumber. Together, these two motivational states operated in unison to signal to participants that the act of drinking a glass of water was worth striving for. Though interesting, this research still leaves many questions for psychologists to answer regarding the influence and motivational power of subliminal priming, but it does paint a comforting picture which suggests that subliminal messages can at their best only encourage you to do what you already wanted to do in the first place.
