What do you see or hear in messages?

#subliminal messages

Subliminal messages have been a part of US culture since the late 1950s. It is used in advertising from whiskey ads that contain hidden pictures of skulls and ghosts to women’s perfume ads that contain unseen pictures of a phallus.

In music, it is the same format. A Beatle record, the group’s fans admitted to hearing “Paul’s dead” and a Queen song when played back ways was stated as saying, “it’s fun to smoke marijuana.”

Many artists have inserted messages in their art. Is it a figment of the imagination or do such subliminal messages truly exist?

Subliminal messages have been defined by researchers as messages or facts that are masked in a way that they go unnoticed by the conscious mind yet are perceived by the subconscious part of the mind.

This idea can be applied to job interviews as well. When a recent candidate went to a company to interview. The message from the human resource department coordinator was plain and simple, if you don’t follow our company’s lead of being in our court then you should not be hired. The second interview was similar to the first since the candidate was asked a series of questions pertaining to him doing temporary work for a competitor and the message was not specifically told but implied that he should eliminate his work history with this competitor on his resume.

What the human resource department did was rewrite his resume and eliminate the prior work history of the competitor company to suit the needs of the current company so his resume could be sent to the corporate office for the position. The interviewee was astonished that this type of behavior exists.

The interviewee assumed he was getting the wrong message when they had disguised leaving off the temporary job duties. He had assumed this was to show that he did not do temporary work while going for company interviews. He thought that many organizations do not want future employees to have any temporary/staffing work on their resumes because they are considered job skippers. And for this position, this was considered a poor work history for the job he was going after at the time.

As one recruiter said recently, “we have companies following media’s leads of pushing subjective (feelings, emotions) material over objective (facts, figures) material and there are deep subliminal messages buried within the context of interviewing or doing the job today.”

An excellent example of this is two women who were hired to work at a leading warehouse job in the last few weeks. They were trained for three weeks and given their work badges and vests to wear for the jobs. They were called in the fourth week of work and told to turn in their work badges and vests. The thought that crossed their minds was that they were getting fired.

A coworker stated that they needed to contemplate why they were really hired for the job. The thought that occurred to them was that they were hired based on their gender and race and it made the company look decent to hire women of color. (This was objective behavior that was implied for the labor board’s yearly review for the company.) Who stood around and looked pretty for the men working at the company. This is why they were asked to wear appealing clothing to work so the men nearby could look at them while working. (This was subjective behavior for the men. Feelings and emotions that men received while looking at them.) As one gentleman put it, “you are window decoration.” One female worker finally realized that since one of the men’s wives owned a boutique, she was supposed to shop there to buy snug clothing. She never thought that it was so he could look at this young girl all day long working next to him in a sheer blouse and a tight skirt.

As one reporter for a leading newspaper said, you must have attribution for a story and cannot go with subliminal messages in drafting a report based on a speech or interview with a prominent person.” But today everything is reversed in the job market. You must be able to notice subliminal messages and you are frowned upon if you must ask the interviewer what they mean or what is interpreted in the job.

This creates chaos because everything can be a double-entendre, usually words that have two different meanings. And when you leave the interview, a person feels that they may not have displayed themselves in the best light for the job opening.?

Also, what subliminal messages accomplish as psychologists have suggested, puts a rational person into a state of doubt. Doubts that you are not up to the full potential of the job requirements. And a person who is unstable tends to push them over the edge. This is the reason employees are companies are having more arguments, fights, and even shootings at work.

?A working example is a gentleman who was interviewed for a position at a publishing house last year. The researcher was hired, and he was able to perform the duties assigned to him. He was able to fulfill them based on his experience working as a researcher/editor and graduating from a top university in his field. Well, soon the management started criticizing his work and it seemed he could not get a break from the constant complaint about his duties.

He was assured that his work was up-to-par by having two past English professors look over his work before he turned them in at the publishing house. Even though none of his clients complained, most of the argumentative behavior came from management at this firm.

What the publishing house did not comprehend was that this gentleman was bipolar and taking medicine for the condition. By having constant aggravation from management over his work, the company pushed him into committing suicide.

Subliminal messages are a big business and with self-help subliminal books, tapes, and videos the publishers have made millions of people buy into curing baldness, and skin problems, and losing weight. Subliminal messages are used constantly on the Internet by people who purchase products daily. An example, a person is using the Internet for research or to find a product at the time. The search engine will have popup ads for stores that have products that the viewer has bought and are appealing to the viewer’s income level. If a person has bought an expensive item previously, the search engine’s popup ads know this based on your past customer buying sprees. The search engine uses subliminal messages in the popup to convince the person to go and look at their products on a particular website/catalog to buy.?

There are also people out there on social media who claim that they can find a person for your next big job with a certain company, or they can help you climb the ladder to success with their resume format for a specific price, which is usually extremely high. They are using subliminal messages to convey, “hey, we helped this group of people find these jobs and why can’t you find a job? Something must be wrong with you if you cannot find your dream job. People start to doubt their skill set based on the information they receive from these subliminal messages.

A person is pulled in every different direction based on what they are hearing and viewing from these recruiters or resume writers who can sell you to the masses and find your perfect job. Many laid-off people have fallen for these subliminal messages of deception and spent a lot of money on false hopes of finding the perfect job and getting the perfect resume format for their job hunt.

However, there is no authentic technical pragmatic research produced so far that demonstrates that subliminal messages can alter behavior in a person’s thought process. But what researchers have found out from minor investigations is the best time to listen to subliminal messages is just before and during sleep. Self-help gurus and motivational speakers have suggested to people trying to provoke them to do something. One’s subconscious is relaxed and can be influenced more easily because the brain activity is low thus making your affirmations easier to attack.?

Even though subliminal messages have been used in political, telethons, and non-profit campaigns, the Federal Communication Commission has outlawed its use. The power of subliminal messages gained prominent attention when it was first introduced in 1956 by a marketing research firm used at a New Jersey drive-in film. The message was "Eat Popcorn and drink Coke". The message was flashed several times throughout the film and the breaks onscreen. The marketing agency claimed it worked and the drive-in saw a major increase in sales of popcorn and soda that night.

But when the agency tried to duplicate the first attempt later that month, nothing happened. Sales did not increase because people started talking about what they saw onscreen to each other. It was later revealed that the whole marketing idea was a hoax by the research company to increase sales of the products that they were lucratively paid to promote.

The main question asked yourself in subliminal messaging is, who is doing what to whom and what are the reasons? The whole question is about motivation or changing the outcome of the situation in favor of one party. The first example of the employee was to change his resume to suit their corporate needs at the time and make him the best candidate for the job. And eventually, pry the competitors’ information out of him to suit their own company’s needs and to get them ahead of the competitor’s agenda for a new computer game.

The second example of the women at a large warehouse was that the company had been in trouble with the labor board for not hiring enough women and women of color to work at the company. But the company could not hire women because the warehouse-required heavy lifting and moving of merchandise all the time. So, to please the labor board that was on their case, they decided to hire the women to suit their needs and to show people that they hired women. But they let the women go after a few weeks because all they could do was stand around and look good to the men who were working. The company made sure that they hired young, attractive women to work because men needed something pretty to look at during the day.

The double-entendres used for the warehouse workers were, you look hot, meaning the women looked attractive but were working under the hot sun. He has a large package, meaning he is carrying a large package or box but needed help with his own sexuality. One boss said, why don’t you go and help with the office drawers and let’s compare yours with ours at the end of the day.

In the third company, a publishing house, the gentleman was hired to do the job, but the company pushed employees so hard that most quit within a certain time limit. The publishing house did not expect employees to last over two years because the company would have to start paying people for medical and retirement expenses based on their company's original work contract. The company did not know this gentleman had bipolar symptoms and he was off his medicine due to changing prescriptions at the time, but he was unstable after working for the company for a period and committed suicide.

Comments that were made to the employee were dental work can be paid for by insurance, if you know how that works. Implying that he was ignorant. There is a sale on men’s suits at Kmart if you need a new suit. Entailing that he did not have the money to shop at a regular store.

Subliminal messages are used in everyday life and in interviewing for jobs currently. As it was mentioned above, you (as a person) must know who (the person/company) is doing what (situation) to whom (the person or another company) and what are the reasons (intentions) that the company is using subliminal messaging for. Is it to gain something in their favor?

It usually is!