Effects of Subliminal Conditioning on Computer Program Users MAS 630, Spring 2005 April 29th Hyemin Chung

Backgrounds Subliminal affective conditioning can affect people’s behavior or evaluation.  After unconsciously exposed to A, people choose A rather than B when they are forced to choose one between them. (Bonanno,1986)  People with positive subliminal conditioning give higher score than people with negative subliminal conditioning in evaluating something. (Winikielman,1997)

Purposes Can we use the subliminal affective conditioning in human-computer interactions?  Can we use the conditioning to make computer programs more favorable?

The Experiment - Method Using a specially coded program Participants are asked to run the program and to follow the instructions of the program. Asked to fully attend to the program. Asked not to stop, suspend, or re-run the program during the experiment. Questionnaires are included in the program. Participants do not know the purpose or the details of the program before the experiment. The program takes around 10 minutes.

The Program Randomly chooses the conditioning mode  No conditioning mode – Control Group Shows a blank image as a conditioning image  Positive conditioning mode Shows a positive image as a conditioning image  Negative conditioning mode Shows a negative image as a conditioning image Shows the conditioning image for 109 times during the experiment

Subliminal Affective Conditioning Images Control ImagePositive ImageNegative Image

The Program – Image Hiding Conditioning Image Less than 1/30 secs Dummy Picture 2~3 secs

Demo Run Demo  A one-minute version of the program Pre-experiment Questionnaire  To gather basic information about participants  To minimize external effects such as weather, environment, or hunger Dummy Tasks  To expose participants to subliminal conditioning without their knowing Post-experiment Questionnaire  To collect result data

The Experiment - Participants Total : 42  8 females, 34 males  Ages : 20~35 years old Control Group  16 : 3 females, 13 males Positive Group  15 : 2 females, 13 males Negative Group  11 : 3 females, 8 males

Effects on … See Results Negative effects are stronger than positive effects  Q71 : How much did you want to quit this program?  Q74 : Was the experiment pleasant? A little correlated with initial mood states Q7  Q76 : Was it annoying?  Q77 : Was it boring?  Q78 : Do you like this program? Subliminal conditioning itself can be negative.  Might be because of increased cognitive loads

Effects on … Positive effect still can be expected.  Q72 : Are you willing to participate in more experiments like this one?

Little Effects on … Little effects on  Mood and arousal Q7/Q79 : How are you feeling now? Q75 : Were you excited? Subliminal conditioning can affect the responses of users without evident changes of their emotional states. Can be supported by other research :  In one research, the behaviors of participants were affected by subliminal conditioning, but they didn’t recognize any changes in their mood or arousal. (Winkielman,2005)

Cognitive Load Problem Possibility of negative effects from cognitive load  Q15, Q18, and Q20  It could be coincidence, but it also could be negative effects of increased cognitive load from subliminal stimuli.

Conclusion Users’ emotional states  Are hardly affected by subliminal affective conditioning Users’ responses to the programs  Can be affected by subliminal affective conditioning.  However, negative effects are stronger than positive effects. Users’ capacity or ability  Might be negatively affected by subliminal conditioning.  Maybe because of cognitive loads.  Needs more work about this problem.

Thank you