Subvisual cues are flashed so quickly - usually a few milliseconds - that viewers don’t perceive them. There are two types of subliminal visual messages: subvisual and embeds. Under each category, there are several techniques. To our knowledge, subliminal messages target two senses: visual and auditory. Among them, the visual category dominates our perception. Modern science has discovered 37 known sensory inputs across seven broad categories: visual, auditory, tactile (touch), olfactory (taste), gustatory (smell), vestibular (balance and movement) and proprioception (body awareness). Now let’s delve deeper into these subliminal sensory stimuli. They work through a process in which external sensory stimuli work to trigger reactions without us noticing the signals. Subliminal messages appeal to our subconscious mind. Throughout the day, are you aware of every time you inhale and exhale? Or of every step you take in order not to fall? That’s subconscious thinking for you. Our subconsciousness is more powerful than consciousness when it comes to processing information: Subconsciousness is able to process 20,000 bits of information simultaneously, while consciousness can deal only with 7 ± 2 bits of information at the same time. What’s really fascinating is that our subconscious behavior is always on autopilot.

Think of it as a secret hiding place for our desires, motives and past experiences that exist outside of our conscious awareness. Popularized by Freud, the term “subconscious” refers to the part of our mind that operates below the level of conscious awareness. With consciousness, we can think, judge, feel and experience with awareness.

Our conscious mind gives us executive control of our mind. Our mind consists of two interacting parts: the conscious and subconscious. Needless to say, supraliminal messages work best when we don’t notice them. Interestingly, even though the consumers in this case could hear in-store music, very few of them reported music as a main factor in their choice of wine. In this example, the stimuli - in store music - is supraliminal because it can be perceived consciously. What happened next is intriguing: Sales of German wine increased on days when German music was played, and the same occurred with French wine when French music was played. The store then played German and French music on alternate days. In an experiment conducted in a British supermarket, a selection of German and French wines of the same price and sweetness were displayed.

One example that illustrates how supraliminal stimuli influences our behavior through conscious perception is the German wine and French wine experiment. While both evoke neural responses and consequently influence our behaviour supraliminal stimuli can be perceived by the conscious mind. Supraliminal is the opposite of subliminal. Why is it important to clearly define these two attributes? Because many prevailing conspiracy theories aren’t even finding the correct cases to attack instead, many confuse subliminal with supraliminal. In short, both the perception and reaction to subliminal messages happen at the subconscious level. The second thing we need to understand is that subliminal perception is believed to be a result of a deliberately designed communication technique aimed at generating a response, so that people will do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. When an external stimuli falls below ATL, it cannot be detected consciously. Absolute threshold is defined as the lowest level of stimulus we can detect, be it visual, auditory, or sensory, etc. The first thing we need to understand is that we cannot become consciously aware of subliminal stimuli even if we look for it. The word “subliminal” literally means “below threshold.” Subliminal messages are defined as signals below the absolute threshold level (ATL) of our conscious awareness. Create beautiful graphs like this using Visme

Subliminal music