Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 12, 1990 TAG: 9004110267
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DON OLDENBURG THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
You don't even have to listen carefully. This is elevator music for the inner mind - just push the button and hidden messages automatically begin to transport your life to heights you never imagined. No thinking or willpower necessary. Put on the earphones and take care of chores, drive your car, do your job, cook dinner; you can even sleep, that'll work too.
And the promises are no less inviting: Lose weight, quit smoking, overcome alcoholism, stop procrastination,reduce stress, increase self-esteem, attract wealth and prosperity, resist junk food, manage time, gain confidence, improve memory, be happy, be a magnet of love, achieve peace of mind, win the lottery.
But wait, there's more: Achieve good health, renew vitality, look younger, end migraines, beat depression, overcome sexual dysfunction, speed recovery from injury, release natural healing forces, prevent diseases.
These are only a sampling of claims being made by manufacturers who design and market self-improvement tapes that borrow from the controversial psychological phenomenon called subliminal suggestion.
Based on the concept that what we don't hear might nonetheless affect us, subliminal perception has been poked at and prodded for decades by scientists trying to determine whether information presented below our threshold of awareness speaks convincingly to our unconscious mind. If laboratory testing hasn't been conclusive, it has at least cast doubt on mass-produced applications for subliminal messages.
That hasn't deterred a growing number of big-name publishers, pseudo-scientists,researchers with respectable vitae and, some contend, bunko artists, from making and marketing easy-listening tapes that promise the best of all personal worlds.
According to one such marketer who tried to organize a "subliminal science council" inside the industry, about 2,000 individuals and companies in the United States and Canada now produce these sleight-of-sound products for retail sale. Americans bought more than 5 million of the tapes last year, according to other estimates. With sales branching beyond alternative direct-mail catalogs and New Age-type magazines and into mall bookstore chains, cable TV ads and mainstream publications, both critics and tape makers figure the subliminal business to boom in the '90s.
"We're talking about a multimillion-dollar industry that's getting bigger and bigger every year," says Timothy Moore, an outspoken Canadian psychologist who disputes the effectiveness of the tapes and reprimands the scientific community for not speaking more forcefully against them.
In Toronto recently, Moore filed a complaint with the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) against a fellow psychologist who deals in subliminal tapes.
"The ways in which these products are marketed and advertised are in clear violation of the ethical guidelines of the CPA and the American Psychological Association," says Moore, a York University professor who has conducted subliminal research. "I don't think these claims can even come close to being supported. You name a problem, you can find a tape for it - breast enlargement, pregnancy, adult survivors of sexual abuse . . . It's fraudulent."
Yes! Books, a Washington, D.C. bookstore that specializes in New Age and alternative publications, carries dozens of subliminal self-improvement tapes. Floor manager Deidre Schwiesow says sales are good - and so is the customer feedback.
"I haven't known anybody to come in and complain," says Schwiesow, 23. "They don't say that it was worthless. The people who tend to buy them do tend to be repeats . . . One woman was listening to one of the tapes for over a year, and she had to buy another copy 'cause I guess it wore out."
Schwiesow has tried a tape or two herself. "When I sat down and listened to this one with really pretty music that was for self-esteem, it really made me feel better . . .," she says. "I find they are very relaxing." But perplexing. She hasn't determined what it is about these tapes that changes people.
"How do you ever know if something subliminal is working?" she asks. "So much of that sort of thing is going to be the power of suggestion. Just the fact that it is supposed to do something . . . who's to say that isn't true about a whole lot of medicine in general?"
Last July, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had a say in the controversy. In what one prosecutor described as "a test case on subliminals . . . right out there at the lead of what this whole thing is about," the FDA's Los Angeles office demanded that Success Education Institute International correct "misleading claims" about its subliminal cassettes.
Ray Hyman, a University of Oregon psychologist working on a National Research Council subcommittee to examine subliminal claims, says the hundreds of titles now available are limited only by the imagination - and certainly not by scientific proof or common sense.
"We've come across a subliminal tape to help you get a divorce, and another one from the same company to help you not get a divorce," he quips. "We wondered what would happen if the husband got one and his wife got the other."
While major publishers such as Bantam and Warner Brothers stick mostly to profitable vices in their subliminal lines, other manufacturers sell tapes for almost any problem or improvement.
Except for its claim of using time-compression technology to bombard the unconscience, Psychodynamics Research Institute, in Zephyr Cove, Nev., is typical of the industry. Its $14.95 titles include: "Winning at the Track," "Fear of Flying," "Control Spending Habits" and "Programmed Weight Gain." Tapes for kids? There's a potty-training tape for toddlers 18 months to 3 years and "Good Study Habits" for 6 years and older. Send $229 and it'll custom design a tape "to your own specifications."
But if subliminal tape firms come up short on sound science, most of them are long on testimonials. Psychodynamic's glowing reports are identified only by initials and home states: R.L. from Pennsylvania took nine strokes off his golf handicap after one week of subliminals; "unbelievable" is how G.K. from Florida described results from the "Sex Appeal-Attraction" tape; A.J. from Illinois wrote just to say "our society would become a more sane society if the entire population would use your products."
Skeptics think otherwise. "They don't work," says James V. McConnell, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "There have been literally hundreds of studies and not one has shown them to be effective in changing behavior."
One of the earliest researchers in subliminal persuasion, McConnell has conducted many such studies. In 1959, he subjected participants to subliminal messages about eating cake that showed "no effect."
A later study attempted to sway closed-circuit TV viewers to choose a particular brand of beer and showed results no better than chance. "You get much better results," says McConnell, "if you simply put the message out where everyone can see it."
by CNB