Are you sure that you aren’t being subconsciously manipulated into making decisions that you wouldn’t normally make? Are you sure that over the next few days, your purchases of popcorn and Coke will be completely under your conscious control? Are you even sure that I haven’t embedded secret messages into this research paper to manipulate you into giving me an A? If you didn’t consciously perceive “secret messages” but you did perceive them subconsciously, then they would be called subliminal. The word “subliminal” literally means “below the threshold” (Encarta 99). The threshold is the level at which you are aware of stimuli, so if something is below the threshold, or subliminal, you are not consciously aware of it. Therefore, you may be …show more content…

However, in 1988, RJR Nabisco launched the “Smooth Character”, a cartoon camel modeled after James Bond and Don Johnson. 5,000 children from California were polled and 22% of girls were smoking Camel cigarettes, and 24% of boys were smoking Camel cigarettes! This was a significant rise from the original .05%! Another study showed that children were as familiar with the “Smooth Character” as Mickey Mouse! Even if the sexual subliminal messages weren’t intended, or effective, it still gives off the subliminal message, “Smoke Camel cigarettes, and you will be cool and attractive!” Both males and females are grossly manipulated by images just like these, which say that if you wear a certain designer’s clothes, or drink a certain soda, or smoke a certain cigarette, that they will be cool and beautiful just like the “beautiful person” in the advertisement! Subliminal messages can be as disturbingly simple as that. There seems to be three people in particular who know a lot about subliminal perception and advertisements, and those people are Wilson Bryan Key, Ph.D, William Bryan Cane, and Eldon Taylor, Ph.D. They have showed up many times in my research so I believe that they all play an important role in my research report. The first man that I mentioned was Wilson Bryan Key. He is famous for the uncovering of subliminal images in advertisements. He argues that “not only are we being subliminally merchandised today but the public has been subliminally seduced for hundreds of