It's All in Your Head

University of Nijmegen researchers in the Netherlands have been studying subliminal advertizing, and they say if conditions are right, it can actually work:

In a first study, the team asked 61 volunteers to perform a nonsense task -- counting a string of Bs on a screen -- while a 23-millisecond message flashed up.

One group received the words "Lipton Ice" for the iced tea brand, while the other, called the control group, received the meaningless words "Nipeic Tol."

After this work, the guinea pigs were asked to rate how thirsty they were and to choose what drink they would order, between Lipton Ice and a popular local brand of mineral water called Spa Rood, if they were sitting on a cafe terrace.

Those who rated themselves thirsty were likelier to choose Lipton Ice, but only if they had received the subliminal message.

In a second study, the team recruited 105 volunteers, and got half of them to eat a very salty sweet before the same tasks.

Eighty percent of those who were thirsty and who had been exposed to the Lipton Ice message chose that product. By comparison, only 20 percent of those who were thirsty and who were in the control group chose Lipton Ice.

In addition, the thirstier a volunteer was, the likelier he or she was to choose Lipton Ice.

Those who were not thirsty were only slightly likely to choose that product, which suggests "priming only works when the prime is goal-relevant," lead researcher Johan Karremans told New Scientist.

I'm still not sure if it could really work, I'll guess we'll have to wait and see.

Go get your wallet