Nepotism is good
By Dr.
Sohail Ansari
‘If you hold a cat by the tail you learn
things you cannot learn any other way.
It is better to deserve honors and
not have them than to have them ad not deserve them.
If you tell the truth, you do not
have to remember anything.
·
Nepotism is not bad in a society if it approves entitlement by
birth.
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‘What you see is simply not what your eyes see
and send to your brain. What you see is actually information made up by our
brain_ things that our eyes never actually see’.
Students
must read ‘NEW GENERATION OF SUBLIMINAL MESSAGES
in subliminal manipulation.
Subliminal
(of a stimulus or
mental process) below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by
or affecting someone's mind without their being aware of it.
A message passed to the human
mind without the mind being consciously aware of it, as, for
example, in advertising
Stimulus
A thing or event that
evokes a specific functional reaction in an organ or tissue.
"Areas of the
brain which respond to auditory stimuli"
A subliminal message
is a signal or message designed to pass below (sub) the normal limits of
perception. For example it might be inaudible to the
conscious mind (but audible to the unconscious or deeper mind) or might be an
image transmitted briefly and unperceived consciously and yet perceived
unconsciously.
“Subliminal advertising” began with the 1957 publication
of Vance Packard’s book, The Hidden Persuaders. Although
Packard did not use the term “subliminal advertising,” he did describe many of
the new “motivational research” marketing techniques being employed to sell
products in the burgeoning post-war American
market. Advertisements that focused on consumers’ hopes, fears, guilt, and
sexuality were designed to persuade them to buy products they’d never realized they
needed. Marketers who could reach into the hearts and minds of American
consumers soon found consumers’ wallets to be within easy grasp as well.
It was James Vicary who coined the term
“subliminal advertising.” Vicary had conducted a variety of unusual studies of
female shopping habits, discovering (among other things) that women’s eye-blink
rates dropped significantly in supermarkets, that “psychological spring” lasts
more than twice as long as “psychological winter,” and that “the experience of
a woman baking a cake could be likened to a woman giving birth.” Vicary’s
studies were largely forgettable, save for one experiment he conducted at a Ft. Lee, New Jersey movie
theater during the summer of 1957. Vicary placed a tachistoscope in the
theater’s projection booth, and all throughout the playing of the film Picnic, he flashed a
couple of different messages on the screen every five seconds. The messages
each displayed for only 1/3000th of a second at a time, far below the viewers’
threshold of conscious perceptibility. The result of displaying these
imperceptible suggestions — “Drink Coca-Cola” and
“Hungry? Eat Popcorn” — was an amazing 18.1% increase in Coca-Cola sales,
and a whopping 57.8% jump in popcorn purchases. Thus was demonstrated the
awesome power of “subliminal advertising” to coerce unwary buyers into making
purchases they would not otherwise have considered.
Or so goes the legend that has retained its
potency for more than forty years, which includes the belief the Federal
Communications Commission banned “subliminal advertising” from radio and
television airwaves in 1974, despite that fact that no studies had shown it to
be effective, and even though its alleged efficacy was based on a fraud.
You see, Vicary lied about the results of
his experiment. When he was challenged to repeat the test by the president of
the Psychological Corporation, Dr. Henry Link,
Vicary’s duplication of his original experiment produced no significant
increase in popcorn or Coca-Cola sales.
Eventually Vicary confessed that he had falsified the data from his first
experiments, and some critics have since expressed doubts that he actually
conducted his infamous Ft. Lee experiment
at all.
As usual, the media (and thereby the public)
paid attention only to the sensational original story, and the scant coverage
given to Vicary’s later confession was ignored or quickly forgotten. Radio and
television stations began airing subliminal commercials, leading to two
congressional bills to ban the practice being introduced in 1958 and 1959 (both
of which died before being voted upon). In 1973, Dr. Wilson B.
Key picked up where Vicary left off, publishing Subliminal Seduction,
an indictment of modern advertisements filled with hidden messages and secret
symbols — messages and symbols that only Dr. Key could
discern (including the notorious example of the word “S-E-X” spelled
out in the ice cubes pictured in a liquor advertisement). The old “subliminal
advertising” controversy was stirred up again by Dr. Key’s book,
leading to the 24 January 1974
announcement by the FCC that subliminal techniques, “whether effective or not,”
were “contrary to the public interest,” and that any station employing them
risked losing its broadcast license.
For neither the first nor the last time, a
great deal of time and money and effort was expended on “protecting” the public
from something that posed no danger to them. As numerous studies over the last
few decades have demonstrated, subliminal advertising doesn’t work; in fact, it
never worked, and the whole premise was based on a lie from the very beginning.
James Vicary’s legacy was to ensure that a great many people will never be
convinced otherwise, however.
SIGHTINGS:
The “subliminal cut spurs popcorn sales” is explicitly mentioned in a 1973 Columbo movie
(“Double
Exposure “), and the acceptance of its principle as fact forms the basis
of the episode.
Subliminal Advertising
How subliminal advertising has been used to influence the public,
including examples.
"Over
the years there have been literally hundreds of studies"..."these
studies show that considerable information capable of informing decisions and
guiding actions is perceived even when observers do not experience any
awareness of perceiving".
Philip
Merikle, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo.
A subliminal message is a signal or message designed to pass
below (sub) the normal limits of perception. For example it might be inaudible
to the conscious mind (but audible to the unconscious or deeper mind) or might
be an image transmitted briefly and unperceived consciously and yet perceived
unconsciously. This definition assumes a division between conscious and
unconscious which may be misleading; it may be more true to suggest that the
subliminal message (sound or image) is perceived by deeper parts of what is a
single integrated mind.
In the everyday world, it
has often been suggested that subliminal techniques are used in advertising and
for propaganda purposes (e.g. party political broadcasts).
The term subliminal message
was popularized in a 1957 book entitled The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard.
This book detailed a study of movie theaters that supposedly used subliminal
commands to increase the sales of popcorn and Coca-Cola at their concession
stands. However, the study was fabricated, as the author of the study James
Vicary later admitted.
In 1973 the book Subliminal
Seduction claimed that subliminal techiques were in wide use in advertising.
The book contributed to a general climate of fear with regard to Orwellian
dangers (of subliminal messaging). Public concern was enough to lead the
Federal Communications Commission to hold hearings and to declare subliminal
advertising "contrary to the public interest" because it involved
"intentional deception" of the public.
Subliminal perception or
cognition is a subset of unconscious cognition where the forms of unconscious
cognition also include attending to one signal in a noisy environment while
unconsciously keeping track of other signals (e.g one voice out of many in a
crowded room) and tasks done automatically (e.g. driving a car).
In all such cases there has
been research into how much of the unattended or unconscious signal or message
is perceived (unconsciously), i.e is the whole message sensed and fully
digested or perhaps only its main and simpler features? There are at least two
schools of thought about this. One of them argues that only the simpler
features of unconscious signals are perceived; however please note that the
majority of the research done has tended to test only for simpler features of
cognition (rather than testing for complete comprehension). The second school
of thought argues that the unconscious cognition is comprehensive and that much
more is perceived than can be verbalized.
Various types of studies of
subliminal perception have been conducted. For example, of whether
anaesthetized patients are completely unaware whilst apparently completely
asleep/unconscious. Although the patients themselves report no knowledge of events
whilst they are anaesthetized, more indirect methods of examining what they can
recall confirm that information is perceived without any conscious awareness.
Similarly, studies of
patients with neurological damage show that patients who claim e.g. not to be
able to see certain stimuli nevertheless respond on the basis of information
received from those stimuli. For example, in the case of the syndrome known as
blindsight patients can be unaware of receiving information within an area of
their visual field that they believe to be damaged.
Subliminal messages might
gain their potential influence/power from the fact that they may be able to
cirumvent the critical functions of the conscious mind, and it has often been
argued that subliminal suggestions are therefore potentially more powerful than
ordinary suggestions. This route to influence or persuasion would be akin to
auto-suggestion or hypnosis wherein the subject is encouraged to be (or somehow
induced to be) relaxed so that suggestions are directed to deeper (more
gullible) parts of the mind; some observers have argued that the unconscious
mind is incapable of critical refusal of hypnotic or subliminal suggestions.
Research findings do not support the conclusion that subliminal suggestions are
peculiarly powerful.
The technology of
subliminal messaging has been developed quite far e.g in the hemisphonic
technologies of the Monroe Institute (see below) and such techniques have been
used in very real world situations such as the rapid and comprehensive training
of men in the armed forces to recognise foreign ships and aircraft. Research
suggests that the effectiveness of such tapes or CDs is greatly affected by
whether the user believes they will have an impact (placebo effect).
Subliminal Messages in
Advertising
A form of subliminal messaging commonly believed to exist involves the insertion of "hidden" messages into movies and TV programs. The concept of "moving pictures" relies on persistence of vision to create the illusion of movement in a series of images projected at 23 to 30 frames per second; the popular theory of subliminal messages usually suggests that subliminal commands can be inserted into this sequence at the rate of perhaps 1 frame in 25 (or roughly 1 frame per second). The hidden command in a single frame will flash across the screen so quickly that it is not consciously perceived, but the command will supposedly appeal to the subconscious mind of the viewer, and thus have some measurable effect in terms of behavior.
As to the question of
whether subliminal messages are widely used to influence groups of people e.g.
audiences, there is no evidence to suggest that any serious or sustained
attempt has been made to use the technology on a mass audience. The widely-reported
reports that arose in 1957 to the effect that customers in a movie theatre in
New Jersey had been induced by subliminal messages to consume more popcorn and
more Coca-Cola were almost certainly false. The current consensus among
marketing professionals is that subliminal advertising is counter-productive.
To some this is because they believe it to be ineffective, but to most it is
because they realise it would be a public relations disaster if its use was
discovered. Many have misgivings about using it in marketing campaigns due to
ethical considerations.
During the 2000 U.S.
presidential campaign, a television ad campaigning for Republican candidate
George W. Bush showed words (and parts thereof) scaling from the foreground to
the background on a television screen. When the word BUREAUCRATS flashed on the
screen, one frame showed only the last part, RATS. Democrats promptly asked the
FCC to look into the matter, but no penalties were ever assessed in the case.
The effect this had on the overall presidential race was unclear; the Democrats
and Al Gore received ridicule for finding malicious intent in something that
could have been a simple mistake; the Republicans received ridicule for the
lack of attention to detail and Bush's mispronunciation of "subliminal"
(it came out as "subliminable"). (It bears mentioning that the
"subliminal message" is easily viewable when the ad is played at
regular speed. If the message were truly subliminal, that would not be the
case.)
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