How to Plant Ideas in Someone's Mind

How to Plant Ideas in Someone's Mind

By Adam Dachis / Source: Lifehacker.com

If you've ever been convinced by a salesperson that you truly wanted a product, done something too instinctively, or made choices that seemed entirely out of character, then you've had an idea planted in your mind. Here's how it's done.

Before we get started, it's worth noting that planting an idea in someone's mind without them knowing is a form of manipulation. We're not here to judge you, but this is the sort of thing most people consider evil, so you probably shouldn't actually do anything you read here. Instead, use this information to stay sharp.

If you've seen the film Inception, you might think that planting an idea in someone's mind is a difficult thing to do. It's not. It's ridiculously easy and it's tough to avoid. We're going to take a look at some of the ways it can work.

Reverse Psychology Actually Works

Reverse psychology has become an enormous cliché. I think this peaked in 1995 with the release of the film Jumanji. (If you've seen it and remember it, you know what I'm talking about.)

The problem is that most people look at reverse psychology in a very simple way. For example, you'd say "I don't care if you want to go risk your life jumping out of a plane" to try and convince someone not to go skydiving. This isn't reverse psychology -- it's passive-aggressive. So let's leave that all behind and start from scratch.

If you're going to use logic reversals in your favor, you need to be subtle. Let's say you want your roommate to do the dishes because it's his or her turn. There's always this approach:
"Hey, would you mind doing the dishes? It's your turn."

But in this example we're assuming your roommate is lazy and the nice approach isn't going to get the job done. So what do you do? Something like this:

"Hey, I've decided I don't want to do the dishes anymore and am just going to start buying disposable stuff. Is that cool with you? If you want to give me some money, I can pick up extras for you, too."

What this does is present the crappy alternative to not doing the dishes without placing any blame. Rather than being preoccupied with an accusation, your roommate is left to only consider the alternative. This is how reverse psychology can be effective, so long as you say it like you mean it.

Never Talk About the Idea -- Talk Around It

Getting someone to want to do something can be tough if you know they're not going to want to do it, so you need to make them believe it was their idea. This is a common instruction, especially for salespeople, but it's much easier said than done. You have to look at planting ideas in the same way you'd look at solving a mystery. Slowly but surely you offer the target a series of clues until the obvious conclusion is the one you want. The key is to be patient, because if you rush through your "clues" it will be obvious. If you take it slow, the idea will form naturally in their mind all by itself.

Let's say you're trying to get your friend to eat healthier food. This is a good aim, but you've got a tough enemy: they're addicted to the Colonel and need a bucket of fried chicken at least once a day. Out of concern you tell them to eat healthier. They either think that's a good idea and then never do anything or just tell you to stop nagging them. For them to realize what they're doing to their body, they need to have an epiphany and you can make that happen by talking around the issue.

To do this you need to be very clever and very subtle, otherwise it will be obvious. You can't just say "oh, I read today that fried chicken is killing 10 million children in Arkansas every year" because that's a load of crap and comes with an incredibly obvious motivation for saying it. If chicken is the target, you need to make chicken seem really unappealing. Next time you sneeze, make a joke about coming down with the avian flu. When you're ordering at a restaurant together, verbally convey your decision to order something other than chicken because you just learned how most chicken is processed by restaurants.

When you've done enough of these things -- and, again, with enough space between them so that it doesn't seem like odd behavior -- you can start being a little more aggressive and stop going with your friend to get fried chicken. You can also take proactive steps to improve your own health and tell your friend 1) what you're doing, and 2) how well it's working for you. After a few weeks, if your friend hasn't decided to reconsider his or her position on frequent fried chicken, you can casually mention it and they should be much more open to having a real discussion.

Undersell

Underselling is probably one of the easiest and most effective ways to plant an idea in someone's mind. This is another version of reverse psychology but at a less aggressive level. Let's say you're trying to sell someone a hard drive. They could buy a 250GB, 500GB, or 1TB hard drive. You want to sell the largest hard drive possible because those cost more and mean more money for you. Your buyer is coming in with the idea that they want to spend the least money possible. You're not going to get very far by telling them they should spend more money when you know they don't want to. Instead, you need to cater to what they want: the cheap option. Here's a sample dialogue:

Buyer: Can you tell me about this 250GB hard drive? I want to make sure it will work for me.

You: What kind of computer do you have and what do you want to use it for?

Buyer: I have a 2-year old Windows laptop and I need it to store my photos. I have about 30GB of photos.

You: 250GB is definitely more than enough for just storing your photos, so as long as you don't have many more files you might want to put onto the drive it should be just fine for your needs.

This last sentence instills doubt in the buyer. You could even add "you'd only need a larger drive if you wanted to be absolutely sure you'll have enough space in the future" but that might be pushing it a little bit. The point is, if you appear to have their best interests at heart it can be easy to make them think they want to buy more from you.

Again, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that planting ideas in the minds of others is not necessarily a nice thing to do. Use this information to detect when someone's doing it to you and not necessarily as a guide to do it to somebody else.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad

Subliminal suggestions work!

10 Scientific Studies That Prove Subliminals Work

Source: RealSubliminal.com

We often get asked for further evidence of subliminal messaging, and a lot of skeptical questions from people who have yet to experience subliminal messaging for themselves, so here is a page we have complied with multiple studies which have been conducted on subliminal messaging using audio based messages over the last 30+ years:

Improves Math Skills

Ariam, S. and Siller, J. "Effects of Subliminal Oneness Stimuli in Hebrew on Academic Performance of Israeli High School Students. " Journal of Abnormal Psychology (1982):

* 10th grade students were shown subliminal messages in Hebrew saying; "Mommy and I are one", "My teacher and I are one" and "People are walking in the street" (a neutral statement). The Students received the messages four times per week for 6 weeks.

* 6 weeks later, the students exposed to the subliminal statement "Mommy and I are one" scored higher in a maths exam than the other groups.

Psychologists claimed the messages such as "Mommy and I are one" would boost the students self esteem and have an effect to help them learn. Also interestingly when the messages were revealed so the students were aware of what they were receiving the effect failed, giving support to the effectiveness of sending a subliminal message rather than an overt one.

Helps to Quit Smoking

Palmatier, J.R., and Bornstein, P.H. "Effects of Subliminal Stimulation of Symbiotic Merging Fantasies on Behavioral Treatment of Smokers." The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1980):

* Thirty-four people underwent a 3-week, group-oriented smoking cessation therapy package.

* Results showed that the subliminal messages affected post-treatment smoking behavior of the group. i.e. the people who received subliminal messages after their regular therapy had a lower rate of relapse into smoking again.

A follow up study by Palmatier and Bornstein found that "subliminal messaging noticeably improved the progress of subjects attempting to quit smoking", when compared to the group not exposed to subliminal messages.

Do you want some extra help to quit? Try our hugely successful Stop Smoking Subliminal album.

The Mind Can "Hear" Audio Subliminal Messages

Kaser, V.A. "The Effects of an Auditory Subliminal Perception Message Upon the Production of Images and Dreams". Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1986).

* Subjects listened to an audio subliminal message. The message was mixed with a regular music recording. Another group of subjects simply listened to the regular music recording without the subliminals.

* Both groups were asked to create a pre-test drawing before and immediately after the music was played as well as a drawing of any dreams they had the previous night.

* When the drawings were examined, the effects of the subliminal message could be seen.The drawings of the people who listened to the music with subliminal hidden content contained images relating to the suggestions they were listening to, whereas no correlation could be found with the control group.

* Kaser concluded that "the unconscious/subconscious mind is able to perceive a recorded verbal message that cannot be consciously heard", proving the existence of subliminal perception.

In another study conducted by Dr. Becker experimental and control groups were asked to guess a three-digit number. The experimental group was exposed to the number subliminally embedded in behind a pink noise (similar to white noise) based audio track.

In three different trials an average of 77% of people exposed to the subliminal numbers guessed correctly, in comparison to only 10% of people in the control groups who weren't exposed subliminally to the numbers. This again confirms that subliminal messages are perceived at a non-conscious level.

Losing Weight & Healthy Eating

Silverman, L.H., Martin, A., Ungaro, R., and Mendelsohn, E. "Effect of Subliminal Stimulation of Symbiotic Fantasies on Behavior Modification Treatment of Obesity." Clinical Psychology (1978):

* Silverman et al conducted two experiments on subliminal perception with groups of 26 and 30 women. The women were at least 15% overweight. There were 2 groups, a 'subliminal group' and a 'control group'. Both groups were given some education on weight loss and healthy eating i.e. how to record calories accurately, eating at regular meal times, and how to reward themselves for eating healthily.

* At the start and end of all the sessions, everyone was asked to image a situation in which they would be tempted to over eat. At this point they were exposed to a subliminal message for 4 milliseconds. Either a weight loss based subliminal message for the subliminal group or a neutral subliminal message for the control group.

* In both cases the 'subliminal group' lost more weight than the control group, with the subliminal group losing significantly more by the end of the follow up period. It was concluded that the use of subliminal messaging was able to help people reduce their over eating habits.

Another study conducted by Dr. Becker et al showed that the use of subliminal messages can have astounding results:

* In Metairie, Louisiana, at Dr. Becker's weight loss clinic his patients heard both cassette tape subliminal messages and videotapes containing subliminals.

* One woman lost 100 pounds within one year. In a follow up Dr. Becker found 50% of the patients maintained over half their weight loss for up to two years following the subliminal program. Even more impressively 23% maintained between 75% and 100% of their total weight loss. These figures were significantly better than diet programs in which he did not use subliminal messaging. subliminal messages.

We have had a lot of success stories from our weight loss series. You can use subliminal messaging to gain a higher level of success from your weight loss efforts too! Do you want to develop healthy eating habits? Try our most popular subliminal weight loss album.

Improve Study Skills

Parker, K.A. "Effects of Subliminal Symbiotic Stimulation on Academic Performance: Further Evidence on the Adaptation-Enhancing Effects of Oneness Fantasies." Journal of Counseling Psychology (1982):

* 60 college students on a summer law course for 6 weeks received subliminal messages before 3 of their 5 lectures per week, as also before and after a brief minute counseling session.

* The subjects exposed to subliminal messaging achieved significantly higher grades than the others, which were consistent with other earlier studies.

Subliminal Enhancements Boost Learning Capacity

Cook, H., Ph.D. "Effects of Subliminal Symbiotic Gratification and the Magic of Believing on Achievement." Psychoanalytic Psychology (1985):

* University students were split into groups and exposed to either to a subliminal message, or a control message immediately after class over a period of 12 sessions of 4 millisecond duration messages.

* Students who had received the subliminal messages ended up performing better in their end of year exams than students who received the control message.

* The researchers concluded that subliminally stimulating students to feel better about themselves enabled them to learn more efficiently.

Cure Agoraphobia

Lee, I., Tyrer, P. and Horn, S., "A comparison of Subliminal, Supraliminal and Faded Phobic Cine-Films in the Treatment of Agoraphobia. " British Journal of Psychiatry (1983):

* 32 patients were treated by being exposed to videos twice per week for a period of three weeks. Three of the groups saw the same movie - a selection of agoraphobic scenes, while the control group saw a potter working on his wheel. The three test groups included one group who viewed it at a level below the visual threshold (the subliminal group), one seeing it under normal conditions (the regular group), and the third was exposed to both subliminal and regular viewing as the study progressed (the faded group).

* The faded group showed the greatest improvement out of all of the groups. The improvement was maintained over a twelve week review period.

* These findings findings indicate that both subliminal and regular presentation of messages can be effective in reducing agoraphobic behavior, but when combining subliminal messaging with regular viewing there is an even greater effect.

Darts Accuracy

Plumbo, R. and Gillman, I. "Effects of Subliminal Activation of Oedipal Fantasies on Competitive Performance." The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (1984):

* Subjects tested for their darts accuracy. They were exposed to the following subliminal messages; "Beating him is OK", "Beating him is wrong", and a neutral control message of "People are walking".

* Results showed that people exposed to the message "Beating him is OK" showed greater dart-throwing accuracy than people listening to any other messages.

This study shows that even a simple positive message played while throwing darts can induce a greater level of accuracy.

Strong Reactions To Subconscious Messages

Bornstein, R.F, Leone, D.R. and Galley, D.J. "The Generalizability of Subliminal Mere Exposure Effects: Influence of Stimuli Perceived Without Awareness on Social Behavior." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1987):

* Spoken statements hidden by white noise at increasing volume levels were played to test subjects.

* Stronger physiological reactions were observed in subjects exposed to the messages which masked by loud white noise and inaudible, than when the volume was actually lower and the messages were somewhat audible.

* Research concluded that completely inaudible messages were capable of reaching the human mind, and of having a physiological effect.

Subliminal Messages Reduce Shoplifting

* TIME Magazine reported in 1979 that nearly 50 department stores in the U.S. and Canada had been using subliminal messages over their music systems which had resulted in a significant reduction in both customer based shoplifting and employee theft.

* One East Coast chain amounted savings of $600,000 over a nine-month period!

* Another story in the Wall Street Journal in 1980 stated that subliminal messaging a New Orleans supermarket resulted in an all time low within 6 months of use - from $50,000 per six month period to a figure of $13,000! Furthermore cashier shortages dropped from $125 per week to below $10 per week.

The Power of Subliminal Stimulus

Shevrin, H. "Does the Averaged Evoked Response Encode Subliminal Perception? Yes." (1975):

* Research showed that peoples responses to a given stimulus were statistically lower when subjects were consciously aware, but when the stimuli was presented in a subliminal fashion the response rate was significantly higher.

* Despite people being unaware of the stimuli, measurements suggest that our minds do still become aware. This suggests that while the mind is not consciously aware of any messages, the subconscious mind can pick up on the subliminal information and respond in the same way as if it was received under regular conditions.

Edited by: Lawyer Asad