Imagination, Illusions and Projection: Part I

Cigs, Alcohol and Rock'n'Roll

If you smoke or drink, or even if you don't, you can bet your bottom dollar that in late teenage or early adulthood, and even earlier, you would have been exposed to many ads containing semi-subliminal ads. Advertising in general is a strong influence in these years when one is sometimes desperate to become accepted as an adult. It may not seem as though advertising had any influence on you at the time but advertising played its role to perfection, just like the Rooster in this animation. Give some thought to the role played by Joe Camel, Reg, the Hamlet cigar ads, the Marlboro TV commercials and other promotions and advertisements played in the development of your understanding of cigarettes and smoking? There is no equivalent of these iconic characters in the field of alcohol advertising but nevertheless key elements in advertising have had their influence on you. Whether it be Carling Black Label, Carlsberg, Molson, Jim Beam, Miller Lite, or whatever, these adverts had an impact on you. And some of these contained semi-subliminal elements. So what, you might say. They didn't influence me. Well, don't be so sure. No company spends the amount that tobacco and alcohol companies spend without getting an adequate return on their investment. Even if that investment is simply intended to ensure equity with their competitors, they expect value for money.

Cigarette and alcohol ads tend to have three primary functions. 

First. They present a socially acceptable face to the world: they generally look good and they are found them in classy magazines. They keep company with ads for other, less problematical, products. This association works only to put a 'gloss' on cigarette smoking and the conspicuous consumption of alcohol. The association rarely works the other way around to tarnish the image of products advertised in conjunction with cigarettes or drinks because the number of non cigarette/alcohol ads vastly outnumbers cigarette/alcohol ads. The result you accept that cigarette and alcohol advertising is O.K. 'No problem!'

Second. Such ads are often calculated to keep smokers and drinkers and others in a state of anxiety, often using imagery associated with death or confrontations with death. See the various Marlboro, Jack Daniel and other ads for examples. Your response will be 'Can't be the case'. 'Never influenced me'.

Third. Many ads, particularly those for cigarettes and alcoholic drinks, also attempt to develop a mental link between sex or anxiety and the Brand. The process is known as paired or associative conditioning.  Simply by presenting the two sets of information together viewers become accustomed to the pairing. Viewers thus tacitly acknowledge the association and there is 'cross fertilization' of ideas associated with the brand and whatever they are associated with. The outcome of this process is likely to be that your store of knowledge about cigarette and alcohol brands also contains knowledge of many socially acceptable subjects. In addition, if your preferred brands advertise using semi-subliminal material, you will also 'know' other, less desirable types of information obtained from viewing the semi-subliminal components.

The semi-subliminal content of ads do not need to be simplistic. Marlboro ads, in particular, indicate it is often possible to incorporate two or more semi-subliminal messages within one ad e.g. messages associated with sex and death. It simply requires multiple sets of cues or trigger images in the same ad.  So long as the two sets of cues or triggers are not placed in positions where they conflict with each other, susceptible individuals will tend to 'identify' only those messages that are salient for them. For example, one may find something attractive, another abhorrent, depending upon their own personal

To See or Not to See

A distinction was drawn above between seeing and perceiving.  These terms are not synonymous in meaning.  Psychologists and others can demonstrate very effectively that there is a difference between what is seen and what is perceived.  In brief, the eye responds to light.  It thus only 'sees' colours - perhaps even shapes - but there is no sense or meaning in what is seen.  The world is just a booming, buzzing, confusion of changing colours.  This is the type of description offered by people who have been blind for most of their life and an operation restores their sight. They have to learn how to interpret the visual information they begin to receive. It is information provided by different wavelengths of light registering on the eye that have to be interpreted before it can make sense. For more information on this subject see the entries in the Glossary and also view the Psychology page for examples.

It is only when the sensory input to the eye is combined with knowledge gained from experience that one perceives objects, people, etc.   In effect, information that is merely seen is essentially meaningless. It needs to be converted into something meaningful by perceptual processes.   What is important is what we perceive. When perceptual and related processes do not function properly we hallucinate or become psychotic.   When they function normally they 'turn' the sensory input produced by line drawings or simple paintings into something that we recognize - as with the Clint Eastwood image and other examples shown above.

People, in other words, are active participants in making sense of their world. We are not simply biological video recorders.   What comes to our conscious attention is the outcome of a complex set of psychological processes. But this does not mean that we do not and cannot respond unless we pay conscious attention to the world around us. The widespread use of semi-subliminal ads by major international corporations are possibly one indication of the ability to make sense of information without paying conscious attention to it. But everyday experience at home, work and when travelling provide many other examples of behaviour that operates on the basis of our habitual 'autopilot'. Most thinking and most responses to visual information function on autopilot and it is undoubtedly the case that if semi-subliminal images are perceived then they tend to have their impact, if any, out of conscious awareness.

A fuller discussion of psychological processes can be found on the Psychology page. Additional information, when necessary, can also be found in the Faq's, the Glossary and in chapters on visual perception in most psychology textbooks.