Choices and Illusions (19 page)

trying to fix people, such as the inmates. I soon learned something that Gerald Jampolsky says in his wonderful book
Teach Only Love.

That is this: we teach what we want to learn. I learned the value of life over time, not all at once; the purpose called service; and how to fix myself, not that there still isn’t room for improvment. In fact, one day I decided that if forgiveness was so important, then my

company’s top-selling title at the time (some 20 years ago),
Forgiving
and Letting Go,
should be free. It is free to this day, and you can go to
www.eldontaylor.com
and get your copy right now.

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The naTure

of a ConTroversY

“A ‘no’ uttered from deepest conviction is better

and greater than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please,

or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”

— m A h A t m A g A n d h i

When I began my research at The University of Utah library,

there was little controversy surrounding the idea of subliminal

communication. Early research suggested that this information

might even be prioritized by the mind above normally processed

verbal information. Since then, this idea has been repeatedly dem-

onstrated, particularly by cognitive psychologists using implicit/

explicit memory studies. In this research words are paired, and

subjects study the pairing. For example, the word
house
is paired with
chair,
green
with
tree,
and so forth. One set of subjects reviews the words with full conscious awareness and attention, seeing the

word
chair
followed by the word
house,
while another group receives the word match subliminally, so the word
chair
is seen but the word
house
is presented subliminally. These studies repeatedly demonstrate higher matches for the group that receives the subliminal

match word. Current research, however, shows that some attention

is required for these effects to be seen.1

The advantage to subliminal affirmations is obvious. I often

demonstrate this in seminars, as I pointed out earlier, by asking the participants, “Who would like to make a million dollars this year?”

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CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

All hands go up. Then I instruct the audience to say to themselves

with meaning, “I’m going to make a million dollars this year!”

Within just a few seconds, smiles begin to shine from faces in the

audience as they get back their true inner belief: “Sure, what are

you going to do, rob a bank?” The fact is that to make a million dollars, we must believe we can. If Bill Gates were in the audience, his goal would not be a million dollars, because that is far too little for him. no, his expectation and true inner belief would put a much

higher number in place.

I am going to make a million dollars this year.

Telling ourselves we can or will do something, such as losing

weight, has value, but that value is mitigated by our own true inner belief. Our inner belief must change for change to occur. When

subliminal information is processed, it enters our stream of con-

sciousness. It literally becomes our own self-talk. In time it simply overwhelms a lot of the no/don’t, I can’t, and other information

that is our chicken-yard learning. Soon we believe the message “I

am good” instead of challenging it with such statements as “Good

at what? do you remember when?”

Truth Has No Percentages

However, the field of subliminal information processing was

becoming controversial. At the height of the controversy, the

famous civil lawsuit involving Judas Priest was tried. I was asked

to look at the information by the plaintiff’s attorneys, who had

brought a wrongful death action against CBS (the publisher) and

Judas Priest. I had testified as an expert witness before, but that did not prepare me for some of what followed my deposition and testimony in this case. There was definitely an orchestrated campaign

to discredit witnesses and testimony that might argue subliminal

information is not only perceived but also acted upon. In my

instance, the press had some real fun. For example, I had friends

phone and ask if I had seen the Joan Rivers show on CBS. I had not

seen the show, so they informed me that I had been portrayed as

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the Nature of a Controversy

a mail-order minister who was a high-school dropout. “Truth,” I

used to say when conducting lie-detection interviews, “knows no

percentages. It is either complete or omitting. A substantial relevant omission is deception. no one wants their significant other to be 99

percent faithful. Truth is either 100 percent or it’s not the truth.”

The truth to the Joan River’s statements may be literally cor-

rect, I still have not seen the show, but they are out of context and substantially omitting relevant information. As a senior in high

school in my last semester and holding a perfect 4.0 (A) GPA, I

was called into Reed Call’s office, the principal of Granger High

School. He informed me that since I had missed several days of

school (I lived on my own and held at least one job while attend-

ing school to pay for board, room, clothing, and so forth) and the

school was reimbursed one dollar a day for attendance, they could

not graduate me. I would have to make up the lost dollars to the

school by attending summer school. There was a month or so of

high school left, and I had been offered a postgraduate scholarship if I graduated on schedule. As a hot-headed young 18-year-old, I

basically told Mr. Call, whom I must admit I had no respect for

based on other incidents, to put his diploma where the proverbial

sun doesn’t shine. I left the high school and never went back.

At the age of 25, I decided to return to school. I matricu-

lated at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. no high school

equivalency such as the GEd was required based on my admission

test scores. Indeed, my scores on the College-level Examination

Program (ClEP) provided a year’s worth of college credit. At the

time, I thought I wanted to go to law school, so after three years at Weber, I applied to the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of law, and they had me take a college-equivalency examination

at the university that again I passed. Things in my life changed

about then, so I did not go to law school. The long and the short

of it comes down to this. I invested thousands of dollars and hours in alternative-distance education, as well as weeklong intensives.

Along the way, I earned a doctorate in psychology, became a Fel-

low in the American Psychotherapy Association, and became an

ordained minister. My ministerial schooling at the University of

Metaphysics (
www.metaphysics.com
) was among the best time

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CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

and money I invested. It was a correspondence program conducted

in a distance-learning format, so I suppose it is somewhat true: I am a mail-order minister who dropped out of high school.

Subliminal Influence

However, back to the Judas Priest trial. The case involved two

young men who, after drinking a few beers while repeatedly play-

ing the song “Better by You, Better Than Me” from the
Stained Class
album by Judas Priest, took a shotgun to the playground and shot

themselves. (The full account is also provided in my book
Thinking
Without Thinking
):

Two teenage boys had difficulty adjusting to life. Ray

had just split up with his girlfriend. James had just lost his

job. neither of them was blameless. Both of them were con-

fused. For most young people, the approach to adulthood

provides struggles. It should.

Two days before Christmas, Ray gave James a gift of

music. The music had particular significance. James had

once collected the music of this particular artist, but when

he found the music violated his Christian beliefs, he threw

it all away.

That was a few years before. James no longer pursued

any religious affiliation. He had turned away from religion.

Many people do at some point in their lives.

On december 23rd, James received the album. The boys

decided to play the album while they drank beer. The words

and music of one song held their interest. They played it

repeatedly. The lyrics in several songs encouraged suicide

with such rhymes as “leave this life with all its sin / It’s not

fit for living in.”

Picture these two young men, attractive, on the slight

side—skinny, according to more than one description—

unskilled, not doing well in school, anticipating a life of dif-

ficulty and with delusions of grandeur driven by frustration,

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the Nature of a Controversy

pretending to be mercenaries, or imagining themselves as

heroes.

By mid-afternoon, the lyrics going around in their

heads included, “Why do you have to die to be a hero?” The

two looked at each other as though acting in some movie.

The hero says, “let’s do it!” just before mayhem begins. One

of the boys said, “do it!” The two began chanting, “do it.”

One of them grabbed a shotgun. They went out the bed-

room window to the church playground. Ray placed a shot-

gun under his jaw. James chanted, “do it!” Ray fired the

gun. The blast stunned James. Ray was dead.

James lifted the gun, wet with blood. He said later that

he trembled. He felt afraid. He could be blamed for Ray’s

death. He wondered why they had chanted, “do it.” He

placed the gun under his own jaw. He pulled the trigger.

But James had failed to brace the shotgun. As he pulled

the trigger, the gun lurched forward. The blast shot off the

front of his face. It did not kill him. It left him severely

wounded and disfigured. He lived for nearly three years.

After reviewing the case, I took the position, unpopular as it

turned out to be, that the subliminal command “do it!” was a

causal factor in the double shooting. However, the point we are

interested in here is not the details of the case. Rather, it is the birth of a scientific controversy. Prior to this case, Congressional hearings in 1984 had led to the most significant source of scientific controversy, which was simply whether or not a subliminal message could affect behavior. lloyd Silverman said yes, and Howard

Shevrin was doubtful.2 In the Judas Priest case, Shevrin switched

positions based on newer research and agreed with me: The sub-

liminal “do it” command was a causal factor.3

Questionable Science

You might wonder,
So what was the controversy?
A new study conducted by a marketing student on the influence of labels was

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CHOICES AND ILLUSIONS

being announced everywhere—and I do mean everywhere, from

Seventeen
magazine to prime-time news. This study purportedly proved that subliminal messages did not work to influence behavior. (Again, you can read all the details of this study and the Congressional hearings in my book
Thinking Without Thinking.
) A psychologist I have great respect for supervised the study.

Unfortunately, the study itself did not achieve what the media or

the pundits who sided with CBS claimed it did. So you understand

why it’s necessary for me to go through the study in some detail.

By design, the study evaluated the influence of labels on the

consumer. To do this, the doctoral student who set up the research

project sought and obtained subliminal audiotapes from five dif-

ferent companies. The tapes were of two kinds, one to improve

memory and one to build esteem. The labels on the tapes were then

changed so that the esteem tapes were labeled memory and vice

versa. The pretest instruments measured memory and esteem. After

the test period, subjects were brought back and tested for actual

improvement. Subjects who thought they were playing memory

subliminal messages reported an improvement in memory, and

subjects who believed they were listening to esteem messages

reported an increase in their esteem. The instruments failed to

identify a statistically meaningful change in either. Fair enough, at this point, to state a definite label influence, but how about a real effect regarding subliminal communication?

The five tape companies all claimed different methods and

messages for their programs, including messages in the second

person and messages in the first person. Audio analysis failed to

recover messages on any of the programs. (Remember my Audio

Forensic labs test?)

The fact that audio messages were not recorded does not sur-

prise me. According to an affidavit from the sound engineer of one