This Is Your Brain on Subliminal Information

The movie Sideways aside, I like merlots; but I really don’t like pinot wines. Other than the truly great wines, pinot-bases are too meek for my taste so I avoid buying them. What I find strange is that a few weeks ago, I was in a San Francisco restaurant, slightly distracted by great conversation and gentle background music, and I proceeded to order a pinot off the wine list. I hate pinots so why the heck did I order one?

Back in the late 1990s, researchers took to a British supermarket and tinkered with the store’s background music. For a two-week period they played French music and German music on alternating days, and recorded wine sales by country.  They found that when French music was played, French wines outsold German wines, and when German music was played, German wines sold better. What’s more, shoppers indicated via questionnaire no awareness they’d been influenced by music. An earlier supermarket experiment showed that playing slow tempo music is correlated with shoppers purchasing more (perhaps because it encourages people to slow down and spend more time in the store), and fast tempo music correlates with less spending. I wonder if that SF restaurant was playing French music—France is the birthplace of pinot— when I ordered that bottle of wine, which to be honest, turned out to be pretty darned good.

Background music used this way is an example of supraliminal messaging – shoppers hear the music but are not conscious of it influencing their thoughts. Subliminal messaging is similar except the stimulus in question is undetectable even if you tried, like an image flashed too quickly for the eyes to see, or a sound too low or too scrambled for human ears to hear. But it has an equal impact.

In 2009, researchers experimented with subliminal messaging by showing test subjects either an Apple logo or an IBM logo for 30 milliseconds—too short of a time to consciously process—while asking them to come up with creative ways to use a brick. People who had been shown an Apple logo consistently thought of more creative solutions than those shown the IBM logo. A follow up study found that people shown a Disney Channel logo subsequently behaved in a more honest manner than those shown an E! Entertainment logo. It sounds far-fetched, but it’s consistent with what we know about how the brain processes information. 

Supraliminal and subliminal messaging tactics work the same way on the brain: they influence the subconscious. While consciously we can only process a handful of things at a time, our brains automatically and subconsciously process thousands of stimuli every waking second. Every stimulus activates associations in the brain. You may associate the smell of coffee with waking up, breakfast, Starbucks, or your grandmother’s home. You may associate an Apple logo with creativity, smartphones, thinking outside the box, or Steve Jobs. Mere exposure to an image, even subliminally, can activate these associations, with real effects on your thoughts and behavior. 

We generally can’t control what music is played in our supermarkets, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use subliminal messaging to our advantage. One way to do this is to carefully examine our environments. At work, if your main value is machine-like speed and efficiency, everything in your office should reflect that, even down to the brands you choose. After all, even if you’re not actively paying attention to the logos surrounding you, your subconscious brain is busy processing and associating. Similarly, the décor in your bedroom should encourage rest (or romance), study time should have no more than slow tempo music, and if you want to encourage lingering over a family meal, try no background distractions at all. 

At our Dun & Bradstreet offices in Los Angeles, we designed everything to subconsciously align with our values and goals. We have centuries old barn wood representing our almost 200-year heritage; surfboards built by the mayor to represent our focus on local businesses and community; minimal walls (I counted less than a dozen across the first 10,000 square feet) to emphasize collaboration; a failure wall to highlight the benefits of taking calculated risk. Our offices have been the subject of numerous awards and our employees cite it as a key reason for working at the company. I consider it a key reason for our success. Value statements and signposts are only necessary if you fail to embed your values into the fiber and fabric of an institution. Your environment should match your intentions, as it often tells the true story without uttering a single syllable. 

The people you surround yourself with are equally important, even if you don’t realize it. Enthusiastic, energetic co-workers influence your subconscious to be like them. Over-eaters influence you to overeat. Lazy kids—or even a lazy dog—can influence you to laze at home, which is good if you need to wind down, but bad if you’re trying to be more physically active.  

Spend a few minutes assessing the subliminal messages in your environment, and you can effortlessly prime your brain for whatever you’re trying to achieve—or at least make sure it’s not primed against you. And next time you find yourself making an unusual choice, like ordering your least favorite wine, check the background music! 

Note: A version of this article was first published in USA Today, but because of the importance of the subject matter, we felt it was worth including on Linkedin, where we tend to get more feedback and a lively discussion.