Effectiveness
The effectiveness of subliminal messaging has been demonstrated to prime individual responses and stimulate mild emotional activity. Applications, however, often base themselves on the persuasiveness of the message. The near-consensus among research psychologists is that subliminal messages do not produce a powerful, enduring effect on behavior; and that laboratory research reveals little effect beyond a subtle, fleeting effect on thinking. Research on those claims of lasting effects—such as weight loss, smoking cessation, how music in popular culture may corrupt their listeners, how it may facilitate unconscious wishes in psychotherapy, and how market practitioners may exploit their customers—conclude that there is no effect beyond a placebo or making the person conscious of their current condition. Importantly, research on action priming has shown that subliminal stimuli can trigger only those actions that one plans to perform anyway: only if a person already has the specific intention to perform a certain action, can this action be subliminally triggered. The following sections have more information on specific studies in which the effectiveness of subliminal stimuli are investigated.
Read more about this topic: Subliminal Stimuli