Subliminal messages are a popular tool for confidence building. And they have been for many years. Nowadays you can buy a variety of subliminal audio (and sometimes video) recordings to play to yourself.
These recordings contain messages with a speed or intensity that makes them imperceptible at a conscious level, but the idea is that the subconscious somehow detects them. Thus, as the theory goes, when you listen to or view subliminal messages, they bypass your conscious mind and go directly to the subconscious mind, where they modify your core beliefs, generating lasting emotional changes.
Many sellers of subliminal recordings claim that just by listening to their subliminal recordings 15 or 30 minutes each day, after a few days you’ll see big and permanent improvements in your level of confidence, motivation, happiness, or whatever other emotions the recordings are suppose to generate.
Subliminal messages certainly sound good (no pun intended). But do they deliver the fast and effortless changes they promise? Let’s take a look at what the studies on subliminal messages have to say.
The Research on Subliminal Messages
By far the most common, and often the only piece of research that promoters of subliminal recordings cite to backup the effectiveness of subliminal messages, is the somewhat famous “Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke” study.
In this study, conducted in the 1950s, thousands of people who went to the cinema over a period of six weeks saw the movies they went to with subliminal messages embedded in them. Multiple times throughout a movie, the messages “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coke” were flashed on the screen, but each time the exposure was too short for the messages to be distinguishable consciously. They were subliminal messages.
The result was reportedly an increase of 18% in Coke sales and nearly 58% in popcorn sales during that period. Quite an astounding result! News of this study spread like wildfire and it fuelled international outrage. Several countries actually outlawed the use of subliminal advertising.
This is what many people find out about subliminal messages. And it encourages them to think they work. Here’s what they don’t find out, and I had to do a lot of investigating to discover.
After this study made the headlines, many independent researchers from various countries tried to replicate it. Several dozen similar studies were conducted over the next few years (a big part of which I’ve read personally). And unfortunately, none of these studies managed to replicate the results. Not a single independent study managed to create any meaningful effect by the use of subliminal messages.
A Canadian TV show for example flashed the subliminal messages “Phone Now” during its regular program. Not only that there was no increase in phone calls, but when 500 viewers were asked to guess what the subliminal message had been, not even one of them guessed correctly.
So most researchers concluded that subliminal messages don’t work, and for good reason considering the evidence. They deemed the “Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke” study a freak experiment.
Years later, one huge flaw of this study was to be revealed. In 1962, James Vicary, the author of the “Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke” study admitted that he had simply made up the results of the study to attract customers for his failing marketing business. So that explains that.
Unfortunately, few people ever found this out. So subliminal recordings kept gaining popularity over the years. It’s estimated that today, over $50 million worth of subliminal self-help products are sold ever single year, despite the overwhelming evidence that they are pretty much worthless.
Psychologist Anthony Pratkanis, an expert on subliminal phenomena, has been warning people for years about the hoaxes related to subliminal tapes.
As he states in one insightful article: “tape company representatives are likely to provide you with a rather lengthy list of ‘studies’ demonstrating their claims. Don’t be fooled. The studies on these lists fall into two camps: those done by the tape companies and for which full write-ups are often not available, and those that have titles that sound as if they apply to subliminal influence, but really don’t.”
In Conclusion
So if you’re looking for a reliable way to improve your confidence, you can skip subliminal recordings. The scientific research just doesn’t support them.
I’ve also used subliminal messages myself (before reading any of the serious research on them), and they had no effect. Multiple of my coaching clients told me they have used subliminal recording prior to working with me as well, and they noticed no real improvements of their confidence either.
Believe me, when I was struggling with shyness and social awkwardness, I wanted badly for subliminal messages to work. To just listen to some audio recording with subliminal messages on it 30 min. per day for a couple of weeks and become socially confident: that would have been amazing!
But building solid social confidence isn’t that simple. It requires a more sophisticated strategy.
Subliminal messages are on the right track in the sense that they try to create changes in your subconscious thinking patterns, which as I discuss in more detail over here, is the only real way to build enduring confidence.
But the method in itself is severely flawed. Whether subliminal messages truly reach the subconscious mind or not, the fact is that they have no noteworthy effect once they’ve reached it. They don’t create changes in your thinking patterns, and don’t make you more confident.
There are reliable, well tested and supported techniques though to create lasting changes in your thinking patterns and thus, create enduring confidence. I discuss the very best ones I know, in the form of a coherent formula for building social confidence in my Conversation Confidence guide.
If being more confident in social situations is important for you (and I know it is), and you’re seeking a trustworthy solution, with lots of testing and research to support it, I encourage you to check out my Conversation Confidence guide.
Go here to read what other people who bought this guide have to say about it, and go here to grab your copy today.
