Valeria Marcano/The Cougar
It seems unbelievable to think that you could listen to positive affirmations to pass an exam without studying. Yet if you go on YouTube and type “subliminal messages” in the search box, you will find a community of millions of people dedicated to what looks like nothing less than magic.
It seems like an obvious hoax designed to bring in views, but even if they don’t produce the magical results they sometimes claim to give, subliminals have the ability to affect you subconsciously and make a great positive impact on your life.
How subliminals work
Subliminal messages, or “subliminals” as they’re commonly referred to online, are audios that contain repeated hidden affirmations. These messages are usually hidden beneath music or ambient noise.
You don’t have to concentrate on what is being said. In fact, you’re encouraged to let them play in the background while you study, sleep or do errands. The only real instructions are to drink plenty of water and visualize the results.
Effects range from drastically changing your appearance, attracting wealth, healing sickness to even giving you magic powers. Some people even believe listening to subliminals will make their crush fall in love with them. In theory hearing “everything works out in my favor” would produce fantastic results.
Breaking down the magic
To get some caveats out of the way: most research around subliminal messaging is focused on their use in advertising. As such, there is no scientific evidence that you can alter your DNA just by listening to subliminals.
Beauty subliminals claiming to directly change your facial structure, make you taller or get rid of your acne are most likely false— so why do thousands of people in comment sections claim to get results?
The answer, as one redditor puts it, is that subliminals “change your belief structure,” not your bone structure.
If you hear a message thousands of times saying that you are beautiful and confident, you subconsciously absorb those messages and begin to believe them.
You may feel more inclined to walk with a good posture, which makes you appear taller and less awkward. When you feel good about yourself, you also put more effort into your style and appearance.
These small changes in mindset create a feedback loop of perceived improvement leading to you making choices that create changes to your appearance. Even the success of subliminals claiming to affect the behaviors of others can be explained this way; after listening to a subliminal to make your crush like you, you may feel more confident and willing to make a move. If you listen to a subliminal to get hired for a job, you would feel at ease during the interview, which would increase your chances of success in getting a call back.
In my own experience, I was painfully shy and alone my first year of college, so I tried listening to subliminals for making friends. The videos didn’t magically summon people to me, but they did significantly reduce my social anxiety and get rid of my hesitation to “bother” people with my presence. I began joining clubs and striking up conversations with people around me, something that had felt impossible before. Over time, I organically found the people I would call friends. The subliminals, in a roundabout way, had worked.
A tool of self-possession
I used to scoff at the idea that your life could change without you having to lift a finger. I saw using subliminals as laziness, the antithesis of hard work and genuine self-improvement.
In reality, subliminals are more of a springboard than a magic lamp. Like the placebo effect, subliminals help you help yourself. They do not replace medical care or perform plastic surgery on you while you sleep; rather, they encourage you to take real, tangible steps to become the best version of yourself you were already trying to be.
opinion@thedailycougar.com
