Re: Subliminal Channels

["George A. Gleason" <gg@well.sf.ca.us>]

Okay, one last post from me on this subject....

An academic text was published in the late 70s or early 80s on this, the
title was _Subliminal Stimulation_ if I remember correctly.  Most decent
university psych libraries should have a copy.  I don't recall the author or
editor's name, though I did read it while an undergrad.  The gist of it was
that there *is* an effect but it's *fairly small* in terms of the subject
population.  As I said before, any induction procedure will work for some
segment of the population, so it's not surprising.  

I have to put myself in the middle on this arguement.  On one hand I think
Key went overboard; it would seem that what happened was he spent his
professional life doing advertising and then someone pointed out something
that was going on, and he over-reacted in the manner of anyone who suddenly
finds he's unwittingly been violating his own morals.  I would suggest that
some of the stuff he's trying to point to is valid, but a lot of it is
improbable to the point where I think a clinically trained observer might
see signs of paranoia.  Now on the other hand, I've found too many really
blatant examples of psychologically devious advertising techniques to write
this stuff off entirely.  The point isn't whether Key is a great
whistle-blower or a raving loonie; it isn't even whether there are forests
of hidden genitals growing in ad illustrations... the point is whether the
effect of saturation in psychologically-loaded high-production media aimed
toward promoting passive consumerism is healthy for a culture or for the
free will and dignity of its members.  And I would say it certainly is not.

-gg