Supersoft Sell

Psychologists have long known that a person sees more than he realizes. The brain registers impressions that flash past too quickly to be consciously noted, uses the subconscious impressions to shape opinions and ideas. This week a New York University psychologist told how subconscious sight was used to fool subjects into thinking that a static portrait was really changing.

N.Y.U.'s Donald P. Spence and George S. Klein, working with Sweden's Gudmund J. W. Smith, flashed a line drawing of an expressionless male face on a screen. They asked their 20 subjects to note how the expression of the face changed. Then they intermittently alternated the unchanging face with the word "angry" in one series of exposures and "happy" in another. The words were flashed on the screen for only a few thousandths of a second, too briefly for the subjects to be aware of what they were seeing. Consciously, the subjects could see only the picture. Subconsciously, they saw picture and words. They tended to think that they saw the face becoming either angry or happy, depending on which word was Hashed on the screen.

Spence thinks that "subliminal registration," e.g., below the threshold of consciousness, can work even without the subject's cooperation. Thus, ambitious opinion shapers of the future might possibly sell their political candidate--or breakfast food--by the supersoft-sell method of subconscious sight, flashing their slogans into living rooms under cover of a televised horse opera. Chuckles one TV executive with a conscious eye on the future: "It smacks of brainwashing, but of course it would be tempting."

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