Subliminal Messages and Their Effects on Human Life
Subliminal Messages and Their Effects on Human Life
Ozan Maraşlı
Research Paper
By the significant advancement of technology, the vision and the way of thinking of humankind has been changed uncharacteristically. The word “uncharacteristically” can be counted as a stimulating word to explain the changes clearly due to the seriousness of the circumstance. Because while humans have developed owing to technology, they have started to forget their properties which acquired a humaneness qualification to them and as an obvious consequence of that they have started to be against their nature. One of the best instances of that is “Subliminal Messaging”. The concept is formed by the words “Sub” which means “Below” and “Limen” which means “Threshold”. In other words, it can be named as the messages which are wanted to inject to people’s mind while they are unaware of them. The concept of subliminal messaging has been publicly known since 1957 owing to the book “The Hidden Persuaders” written by Vance Packard. Actually Packard didn’t assert a new method. Because the subliminal messaging has been used for many years as it dated back to 5th century BC (forecasted starting time) by its usage in rhetoric methods. What makes this interesting is its effectiveness, usage areas and unethical, more so the abject side of it. It has a huge potential for abusing people’s feelings, minds and instincts however, some of this potential has already been used. The wondering questions about this subject are “Why the subliminal messages are used? What are the purposes of them?”, “What are the usage areas of subliminal messaging?”, “What is subliminal advertising and how it works?” and mainly “Can subliminal messaging be ethically justified considering its effects on human life?” In this essay, the subliminal messaging will be analyzed in the consideration of these questions. When considering its effectiveness, subliminal messaging cannot be acceptable, because it is very open to abuse as
Ozan Maraşlı
Research Paper
By the significant advancement of technology, the vision and the way of thinking of humankind has been changed uncharacteristically. The word “uncharacteristically” can be counted as a stimulating word to explain the changes clearly due to the seriousness of the circumstance. Because while humans have developed owing to technology, they have started to forget their properties which acquired a humaneness qualification to them and as an obvious consequence of that they have started to be against their nature. One of the best instances of that is “Subliminal Messaging”. The concept is formed by the words “Sub” which means “Below” and “Limen” which means “Threshold”. In other words, it can be named as the messages which are wanted to inject to people’s mind while they are unaware of them. The concept of subliminal messaging has been publicly known since 1957 owing to the book “The Hidden Persuaders” written by Vance Packard. Actually Packard didn’t assert a new method. Because the subliminal messaging has been used for many years as it dated back to 5th century BC (forecasted starting time) by its usage in rhetoric methods. What makes this interesting is its effectiveness, usage areas and unethical, more so the abject side of it. It has a huge potential for abusing people’s feelings, minds and instincts however, some of this potential has already been used. The wondering questions about this subject are “Why the subliminal messages are used? What are the purposes of them?”, “What are the usage areas of subliminal messaging?”, “What is subliminal advertising and how it works?” and mainly “Can subliminal messaging be ethically justified considering its effects on human life?” In this essay, the subliminal messaging will be analyzed in the consideration of these questions. When considering its effectiveness, subliminal messaging cannot be acceptable, because it is very open to abuse as