Can subliminal messaging effect your health?

Question

I'm doing a science fair project on how subliminal messaging can change your mood, and effect the way you learn and damage your health. So what exactly can it do to your health?

Answer 1

You might want to check out and possibly recreate the experiments mentioned in the book The New Unconscious by Ran R. Hassin, James S. Uleman, and John A. Barg.  They found that visual subliminal stimuli may be a powerful influence on our health.  If one were to further test blood pressure after being presented with anxiety or anger inducing images you might see that they can have an opposite effect of those designed to improve health.

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People have tried to design devices that convey subliminal messages aimed at affecting people's health.

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Improving Health

- Self-health audiotapes were so popular that scientists tested their effectiveness.  All that was found in the two studies listed in this chapter was a placebo effect.

*** However, visual subliminal perception may be generally more effective than auditory subliminal perception.  We do not know yet whether advertised self-help devices that use visual stimuli have been scientifically tested.

- Single word stimulation would be more likely to be effective.  The author's experiment found that presenting the words "rest" or "relax" did have a measurable effect on the participant's heart rate.  "Subliminal stimulation, then, indeed affects cardiovascular activity."

- When the word "angry" was offered instead of "relax" in the experiment they found that participants had a lower systolic and diastolic pressure if they were presented with the more calming word.

- Findings such as this one do not evidence self-help devices reduce stress though investigation on the effects of subliminal stimuli on health should continue.