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Subliminal stimuli happens so quickly that it is literally "below threshold" of your conscious awareness. Visual stimuli that is flashed for just a few milliseconds is absorbed at a subconscious level before your conscious mind has time to process and interpret the stimuli or visual cue.  The concept of subliminal messaging first took hold in the public consciousness after the 1957 publication of a book titled The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. In his book, Packard describes a new type of "motivational research" that was geared towards marketing techniques advertisers could use to influence consumers to purchase their products.  During the summer of 1957, James Vicary conducted a dubious experiment at a movie theater during a screening of the film Picnic. During the screening of the movie Vicary randomly flashed words like "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry? Eat Popcorn!” for 1/3000th of a second from the projection booth. He claimed that displaying … [Read more...] about Subliminal Cues Impact Motivation, Endurance, and Longevity

In two previous posts, I discussed a study (Dutton, van der Linden, & Lynn, 2016) that aimed to test predictions from the highly controversial differential-K theory. Among other things, this theory proposes that there are racial differences in sexual attitudes and behavior, so that people of sub-Saharan African descent are supposed to be the most sexually permissive, while people of East Asian descent are supposed to be the most sexually restrained, and Caucasian descended people are said to be in-between. The authors used data from a sex survey by Durex, the condom manufacturer, to provide evidence of racial differences in sexual behavior that they claimed supported their theory. This method has a number of problems because the survey lacked data from African nations, and the survey methodology was not up to rigorous scientific standards. Fortunately, more rigorous scientific research is available using data from 48 countries, including several African ones, that can shed some … [Read more...] about Race, Sexual Permissiveness, and Questionable Science