Research On The Factors Affecting The Effectiveness Of Subliminal Messages Dissemination

Since the pioneering study of the American scholar Vickery in 1957, the effectiveness of subliminal messages has been a hot spot in many fields including psychology, advertising and other areas. Researchers had done many studies about subliminal presentation, propagation mechanism and its applications, and the subliminal messages dissemination is also one of the most controversial research areas.There are still many issues about factors affecting the effectiveness of subliminal messages dissemination need further study. Based on the analysis of controversial conclusion and "blank" of previous studies, this study analysis the factors that influence the effectiveness of subliminal messages dissemination by subliminal priming paradigm, both in laboratory and real situations.Through six experiments, this study used subliminal priming paradigm to analysis how fear appeal messages subliminal dissemination influences subjects’risk perception.The first four experiments use earthquake images and the corresponding insurance as fear appeal information, the perception and behavioral intention of risk as dependent variable, in the laboratory environment. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 are intended to analyze the influence of the different ways of subliminal priming (present the primes and targets apart or not)on the effectiveness of subliminal messages dissemination, the results demonstrates that the subliminal priming information present with the target to stimulate can lead to more effective dissemination; Based on the above results, the experiment 3 introduces the individual motivation variables, aim to explore the relationship between the motivation and the dissemination effectiveness of subliminal messages.however, the results of this study found no significance of it. This result may be due to the effectiveness of the motive stimulating way, so we introduces the involvement variables which is related with motivation,experiment 4 uses 2 x 2 completely random design, focus on the relationship on individual involvement and the dissemination effectiveness of subliminal messages, aim to know if the individual involvement can affect the risk perception and purchase intention, and if there is interaction between the two.The results demonstrates a significant interaction between the two, it shows that whether the individual event had a higher correlation with the target, is the important factors that affect the effectiveness of subliminal messages.Therefore, in experiment 5 and experiment 6 we use the high involvement individuals as the subjects,the dangerous driving behavior image and the traffic safety laws and regulations as fear appeal information, the risk perception and the memory of laws and regulations as dependent variable, in the actual situation (i.e., the training of subject 1 in a driving school).Based on the using of flashing stimuli in the first four experiments, experiment 5 use of embedded stimuli and compared the two different ways of subliminal presentation, and the results shows that two ways can effectively influence the spread of subliminal messages, and in the specific situation of the present study, the embedded stimuli can promote the risk perception and memory level more effectively. Experiment 6 compares two different content of subliminal messages and found that, compared with traffic accident scene images, the punishment to illegal driving image has a better effect of subliminal priming, which means can lead to higher level of risk perception.The different content set can make significant effect to dissemination effect, it may be one of the reasons for the numerous inconsistencies of previous research conclusions. In addition, the experiment 5 and experiment 6 run in actual situation, on the one hand to it expand the ecological validity, on the other hand, it aims to a deep investigation into the influence of content set and presentation type of subliminal messages on the effectiveness of subliminal messages dissemination.To sum up, subliminal messages dissemination is an effective way of the dissemination of information, and the effectiveness depends on many factors, such as the way of subliminal priming, the content setting of subliminal stimuli, and may also be influenced by the organic variable such as motivation and involvement.Therefore,the effective results depends on the flexible using of subliminal technology according to the requirements of specific situation and the object especially in the actual application situation.