Choices and Illusions (13 page)

they are much more likely to phone her in an attempt to hook up

than men who encounter this same woman on a park bench.2 I

could go on in much greater detail, but that is not the purpose of

this book. (If you would like to learn more, please read
Mind Programming.
) My point here is not the many things known about us that we might deny, but that they are known and used daily. The

result is,
What was your last original thought?

Whose Thoughts Are You Thinking?

As I’ve already noted, our unconscious mind is actually mak-

ing our decisions—at least most of them! How does it do this? The

information we have input throughout our life—all of it, whether

from parents, peers, games, television, or any other form of com-

munication, including billboards, print and electronic media, and

the like—is what’s in the unconscious. Add to that our experiences, good and bad, and the defense mechanisms that have been built

up to protect us, our method of reasoning, our long bags, and so

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Who Owns Your thoughts anyway?

forth—and while adding, remember to allow in your calculations

for the fact that humans are herd animals and by nature seek accep-

tance and operate primarily on the principle of pleasure over pain.

now you are ready to at least approximate the calculus deployed in

your unconscious mind for decision making.

Suffice it to say, in our modern technological age we are more a

product of nurture, at least in the sense of our total enculturation, than of nature. Interestingly, when someone comes along to point

that out to you, they are typically ridiculed, criticized, and otherwise attacked in order to have their observations invalidated. One

of the most effective tools can be summed up by H. l. Mencken’s

words: “A good belly laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms.” Instead of meeting argument with argument, logic with logic, dismiss it by

making some joke that in itself degrades the message or the mes-

senger. Think of it this way: Sarah Palin never said she could see

Russia from her kitchen, but the joke stuck, and many people today

still believe that those were her words when discussing her experi-

ence in matters of national security. Here’s another example—if

you present information that suggests a possible conspiracy, you’re likely to get a comment in return about your tinfoil hat.

The fact is, as much as we all hate to admit it,
they
already own our thoughts! I am currently working on a new book (tentatively

entitled
Gotcha
and due out in 2014) that will provide all the proof that the most skeptical of skeptics would ever need about how

psychological discoveries are being used in real-world scenarios.

For now, however, let me provide just a few examples. dan Ariely,

professor of psychology and behavioral economics at duke

University, has shown that when we don’t know something about

a person, most of us are likely to fill in that blank in a positive way. Is it just coincidence that we know less about President Barack Obama than any other United States President in history, and that

his people ignore claims that we know little?

Are you aware of the team of psychologists President Obama

used during his campaigns? Quoted in the
New York Times
article, Craig Fox, a member of this team, refers to the group of professionals as a “kind of dream team” of behavioral scientists.3 They consisted of Fox, professor of psychology at the University of California,

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CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

los Angeles; Susan T. Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton

University; Samuel l. Popkin, professor of political science at

the University of California, San diego; Robert Cialdini, regents’

professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University;

Richard H. Thaler, professor of behavioral science and economics

at the University of Chicago’s graduate school of business; and

Michael W. Morris, professor of leadership at Columbia University.

The team provided information not just from existing research,

but guidance as to the “little things that can make a difference.”

The
Times
article said: “At least some of the consortium’s proposals seemed to have found their way into daily operations. Campaign

volunteers who knocked on doors last week in swing states like

Pennsylvania, Ohio and nevada did not merely remind people to

vote and arrange for rides to the polls. Rather, they worked from

a script, using subtle motivational techniques that research has

shown can prompt people to take action.”4

Gotcha

Bottom line, it is big business to own your every thought.

When you think hungry, think fast food; when you’re thirsty,

think soda pop; when you’re anxious—well, you get the picture.

Whether it is politicians or pitch artists, the point is to get you to think what they want you to think, and if they are really good at

their job, you will also deny categorically that your thoughts have been manipulated—at least with regard to their particular subject.

All of this means that the more passionate you are about a subject, the more you need to examine your thoughts again.

Today we are a consumption society that largely uses shopping

to assuage anxiety. In doing so, we create more anxiety, but it is

in the future and doesn’t arrive until we begin to experience the

money crunch. The credit-card bills roll in, and the anxiety builds

. . . so we go shopping again. Make sense? If not—why do so many

people continue to follow this pattern? do you?

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Who Owns Your thoughts anyway?

This chapter has been a brief introduction to the idea that

our thoughts may be owned less by us than they are by others.

deciding to engineer our own, to carefully select and choose the

information that we put in our minds, is entirely up to each of us

as individuals.

If you choose to continue to take in every advertisement and

sound bite without questioning, without discernment, then you

can expect no more than a result based on others’ desires. It is

your choice, and this one is not an illusion unless you choose not

to make it. Think on that.

now that I have shown you how your thoughts may have been

manipulated, let us take a look at one of my favorite subjects—

subliminal communication, or, as I prefer to call it, information

processing without awareness. In the following chapter, I will

attempt to separate the fact from the fiction and expose the

so-called controversy. In doing so, we will look at the varying

definitions and the most current research findings.

Much of the information you have processed in your

lifetime has been information that has passed beneath

your conscious sentry, or recognition.

Information processing without awareness becomes

particularly relevant to our purpose for two reasons. First, much

of the information you have processed in your lifetime has

been information that passed beneath your conscious sentry, or

recognition. Second, it is potentially a very useful tool for changing self-talk, and thereby affecting expectation, self-limiting beliefs, and so forth. As such, once you have a good grasp of this subject,

you will discover how you can turn the tables on the mind

manipulators and actually take back control of your own thoughts.

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inforMaTion ProCessing

wiThouT awareness

“A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man.

Kites rise against, not with, the wind.”

— J o h n n e A l

In the early 1980s I heard that the los Angeles Police depart-

ment had experimented with subliminal programs for a terrorist-

abduction scenario as part of their preparation for the Summer

Olympics the city hosted in 1984. The idea was a simple one.

Because so much time is typically spent in negotiations over the

phone, the subliminal messages would suggest illness. These mes-

sages were designed to produce physiological responses similar to

what would be expected if you had been exposed to a viral agent

that led to diarrhea, vomiting, and malaise. The masking sound was

supposedly that of a furnace, or what is known as pink noise. I was told that the police department tested this program and then suspended it after three days because it was dehydrating cadets. I have never been able to find either confirmation or denial for this report, so I don’t honestly know if it was done or not. What I do know is

that the story piqued my interest in subliminal communication.

My initial exploration into information processing without

awareness had nothing to do with using it as a countermeasure

for mind programming, because my business at the time was

criminalistics. I owned an agency that, among other things, ran

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CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

several hundred lie-detection tests a year. One of the problems

encountered in deception testing is known as “inconclusives.”

That is, the charts are not clear enough to say with confidence that deception is indicated or that the test is nondeceptive. Inconclusives can be the product of poor test structure and preinterview

techniques or, more commonly, countermeasures or situational

stress. The gist of it is that honest people are so nervous about the test results that their anxiety spills across all questions in such a way as to lower the net differential between relevant questions

and prestressed, control, or irrelevant questions. dishonest people employ some countermeasure, such as the proverbial tack in the

shoe, and selectively administer discomfort to themselves during

irrelevant questions, again possibly skewing the differential. I

simply thought how wonderful it would be to use a subliminal

program to ease the situational stress for the honest and to heighten it for those who intend to deceive.

The Subliminal Controversy

To make a long story short, I decided to find out more about

subliminal communication. The literature even then was rather

robust with research demonstrating the efficacy of subliminal

communication. Unfortunately for me, most of the work employed

visual subliminal methods, such as the tachistoscope (a device that displays an image for a specified amount of time, as in 1/100th of

a second), and this simply would not work in my intended applica-

tion. The remaining literature dealt with audio but under tightly

controlled conditions, in which hearing tests for individual thresholds of conscious perception were conducted first and the ambient

background noise was controlled so as not to add noise to signal-

strength ratios. I found, however, a number of anecdotal reports

that ranged from curbing shoplifting to eliminating fainting while

waiting for medical procedures. Most of the anecdotal evidence

I came across had something to do with the Becker Black Box (a

device designed to insert subliminal audio messages in a public

music system, such as the kind you would find in a retail store).

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Information processing Without awareness

As with many others, my early knowledge regarding sublimi-

nal technology arose from the popular media. There were the

now infamous cola and popcorn stories about James Vicary, who

claimed to increase concession sales by flashing such things as

“hungry—eat popcorn” on Kim novak’s face during the showing

of the movie
Picnic.
Contrary to popular opinion, this may have never happened. Vicary had intended to sell a subliminal projector

to theaters around the country, but when he was asked to testify

before Congress regarding the alleged popcorn messages, he denied

making them. We do know, however, that he had the capability.

The Congressional hearings in 1984 regarding subliminal com-

munication and the outrage of the American public, the entire

Orwellian fear mentality of the time, may have induced him to

deny doing such a thing. (For more information, see my book
Mind
Programming.
)

Protection Against Subliminal Influence

Books by norman Cousins and Vance Packard shouted out

fear messages regarding the power of subliminal communication.

Cousins termed this technology potentially the most dangerous

ever developed. Packard, in
The Hidden Persuaders,
spoke of how it could be used to manipulate the public. Then along came Wilson

Brian Keyes, whose books pictorially illustrated the use of subliminal messages in everything from menus to Playboy advertisements.

The alarmed public demanded something be done to protect them

from this invasion of their minds. There were hearings and articles, but in the end no laws were passed to prevent the use of mind programming.1 In the United States, the FCC did create a codification