Subliminal Stimuli
Yesterday I signed up for Spotify. Pick a song, any song, Spotify lets you play it instantly, on your computer, or your phone, or your ipod. For someone like me who loves music but can’t be bothered keeping their local music library up to date it’s a game changer.
The free account I’m on is loaded up with free advertising and the major launch partner is Coca Cola, so for a few hours my music listening was occasionally interrupted with ads for Coke*.
Suprise suprise, later that night I felt like a glass of Coke. I knew it was probably the advertising to blame as I’ve barely been drinking Coke for the last year. I try not to be influenced by ads, and I knew I was being influenced, so it should have been easy to pick a different drink from the fridge. But I really wanted Coke.
Ten minutes and $2.40 later I was back on Spotify with a glass of Coke in my hand.
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Today I watched a series of Derren Brown videos on Youtube. Derren demonstrates conversational hypnosis, subliminal advertising and the like.
When he’s not convincing people to hand him their wallets, or persuading the bookie that his losing ticket is in fact “the dog you’re looking for”, the most interesting parts of his videos are the comments from the victims.
In particular their are a few videos where he’s playing his tricks on psychology professors and students. These guys know what he’s trying to do, they even understand how he’s trying to do it. But they still can’t beat him in his mind games.
This led to me thinking about how our subconscious is easily influenced by everything around us, yet we rarely understand exactly how and to what effect we are being influenced.
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* Yes, I think Spotify is worth the ads, but I am looking into their premium accounts.
