Subliminal messages. Between the devil and the media.

We describe our entanglement in the controversial public issue of subliminal messages in advertising and popular music in order to provide a report of our research unencumbered by the misrep-resentations in the various media reports of this work. A distinction is drawn between the allegedpresence of these messages in the media concerned and the impact they are purported to have upon the listener or viewer. Our research is concerned primarily with the latter: Is there any evidence to warrant assertions that such messages affect our behavior? Across a wide variety of tasks, we were unable to find any evidence to support such a claim. Secondarily, we present evidence to suggest that the apparent presence of backward messages in popular music is a function more of active construction on the part of the perceiver than of the existence of the messages themselves. Finally, we describe our experiences with the public media's handling of these issues. In the fall of 1982 we were contacted by a local radio announcer for information about a phenomenon he referred to as "backmasking." However, his question did not concern the well-studied phenomenon of visual persistence (see DiLollo, 1980; Sakitt, 1976); the announcer wanted to know what were the effects on a listener of messages that allegedly had been recorded backward into popular rock music. He informed us that when such recordings are played in the normal, forward fashion, the messages are not consciously perceived; however, played backward, intelligible messages can be heard. His concern was not that listeners would play their records backward and thereby "hear" the messages but rather that the messages would be perceived unconsciously by the listener when the recording was played forward. He informed us that those who advocated this belief also claimed that the messages had an evil content and that, upon hearing them, the youthful listener was led down a path of loose morality and behavioral aberration. Depending upon the degree of religious belief held by the proponents of these views, the backward messages are, at the least, thought to have been technologically engineered by the rock groups themselves or, at the worst, inserted by Satan. The announcer's and subsequently our interest in backmasking arose from the arrival in our city of Pastor Gary Greenwald of the Eagle's Nest Fellowship in California; Greenwald is a well-publicized proponent of these views (Tisdall, 1983). While in our city, Greenwald held a two-day …