Subliminal primes in real life situations: a study on the effect of textual subliminal primes presented on computers via the internet

Over the course of time the effectiveness of subliminal messages has been the subject of much controversy. This study investigates whether subliminal messages spread via the internet had an effect on which words participants were likely to choose. 108 Participants were presented with a countdown after which a series of four words was presented from which the participants had to choose one word. During the countdown a subliminal prime was presented in the form of a word present in the fifth series. This process was repeated five times for five different word lengths. The result suggests subliminal priming cannot be used to affect people's choice of words in a real life situation. Keywords: subliminal, messages, persuasion.