e it with our senses. In other words if there is something out there that is not able to facilitate any electrical currents in our brain - its just does not exist. Well... at least at the moment it sounds logical and reasonable to us to assume that... But what about all the tons of information that we do absorb everyday and that does not enter our conscious mind? All the colours and pictures wee see every day and all the conversations we are forced to hear... Are we saving all this information somewhere? Could it be of important to us in the future? and if so, how you/your brain decide what is important and what is not?
Obviously Perception is not the same thing as noticing. We can perceive things and respond to them, without noticing their effect, or even their existence. Why should this be possible ?
Our brain didn't evolve to serve strictly as a faithful recorder of images, but as a guidance system for our survival. As a result, it records things as faithfully as is useful, and distorts them when it is not useful (or whenever he retrieve a memory). Our sensory systems evolved to be very flexible in interpreting what we perceive, so that we can respond quickly and adaptively to changes around us.
So yes, the brain is forced to store tons of uneeded information (and data) of which we constantly being exposed to. So the most interesting question is - can all the information we percieve without notice influence our future desicions and judgements that we will make?
The answer is absolutely yes! And its influence on our behaviour is way more than we intuitively assume. all under the what is known as Subliminal perception/stimulation/influence.
It seems that there are at least five basic phenomena of subliminal stimulation:
1. Mere Exposure Effect -- Exposure to an image without awareness predisposes us to prefer that image over others.
2. Poetzl Effect -- Words or images perceived without awareness appear in altered form in imagery and dreams some short time later.
3. Affective Priming -- Exposure to an emotionally compelling image without awareness causes us to respond emotionally without knowing why.
4. Semantic Priming -- Exposure to a word without awareness tends to bias our perception of subsequent words for a fraction of a second.
5. Psychodynamic Activation -- Exposure to certain kinds of fantasy images or suggestion without awareness can influence mental state or psychosocial adaptation in a meaningful and persistent way.
The New York Times has a great article on how our actions and decisions can be subconsciously 'primed' by the world around us. The article brings some examples based on recent scientific findings:
Psychologists at Yale altered people’s judgments of a stranger by handing them a cup of coffee. The study participants, college students, had no idea that their social instincts were being deliberately manipulated. On the way to the laboratory, they had bumped into a laboratory assistant, who was holding textbooks, a clipboard, papers and a cup of hot or iced coffee — and asked for a hand with the cup.
That was all it took: The students who held a cup of iced coffee rated a hypothetical person they later read about as being much colder, less social and more selfish than did their fellow students, who had momentarily held a cup of hot java.
- New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there's a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like "dependable" and "support" — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it.
One of the fascinating (though sometimes disturbing) things about subliminal influence is the possibility to embeded it within sophisticated commercials. In the following video Derren Brown, a british psychological illusionist, demonstrates the use of such subliminal manipulation on advertising experts:
sources
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/health/psychology/31subl.html?ei=5090&en=62f9b092a91bc6dc&ex=1343534400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0006/ai_2699000639/
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/08/the_modern_science_o.html
http://www.realmagick.com/articles/49/549.html
http://howtheychangeyourmind.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment