subliminal messages in video

Images not consciously perceived can affect behavior. A recent experiment showed that subliminally presented happy faces caused thirsty participants to pour more of a beverage and to consume more.  Happy faces also increased participants willingness to pay for the beverage.  Angry faces presented subliminally had the opposite effects.  The effects were not just statistically significant but also economically significant: thirsty participants poured more than twice as much of the beverage after being presented subliminally with happy faces than after being presented subliminally with angry faces.  Despite these effects, participants were not aware of any influence on their any influence on their behavior, nor of any change in their mood.[*]

Hoping that subliminal messaging could be used to improve fans’ attitudes toward referees (and public attitudes toward regulation more generally), I attempted to add subliminal messages to a basketball video.  At 5 seconds, 41 seconds, and 52 seconds into the video below, I superimposed for one frame the word “happy”, a smiling face, and the word “good.”  One frame of Flash video has a duration of 33 milliseconds.  The primes in the above experiment were flashed for 40 milliseconds.  However, they were also masked with similar, neutral images.  This clearly makes a difference, because the messages I inserted don’t quite pass subliminally. Subliminal messaging isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

Subliminal messaging is a misleading concept.  Human beings always process a huge amount of sensory information subliminally. What persons perceive consciously depends largely on the focus of their attention.  Subliminal sensory processing that detects a threat to a person interrupts consciousness and directs attention to the threat.  Eliminating subliminal messaging cannot be done without imposing death on the recipients of concern.

Persons might reasonably be concerned about unethical attempts to influence behavior through media manipulations that cannot be readily perceived and discussed. Flashing the text “Drink Brand-X Soda” in a video in a way that cannot be consciously perceived in normal viewing is an influential example of such action.  With decentralized production and sharing of video, government regulation of unethical influencing is more difficult.  But if such unethical influencing became a major concern or actually significant, video players might include detectors or filters for unusual, short-duration text insertions or frame patterns.

Note:

[*] See Winkielman, Piotr, Kent C. Berridge, and Julia L. Wilbarger, “Unconscious Affective Reactions to Masked Happy Versus Angry Faces Influence Consumption Behavior and Judgments of Value,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, v. 31, n. 1, January 2005, pp. 121-135.

ode for Frank O'Hara

Dead beat John John has been killed!
I was sleeping with Nancy and struggling
with coming without that rushing
well, you know how it tingles
but getting her pregnant was not
something that I wanted to spend my
life paying for and I love you really
more than I ever did anyone
but thinking it would be like with her
and suddenly I see a headline
DEAD BEAT JOHN JOHN HAS BEEN KILLED!
he got one of those girls pregnant
that bum didn’t want to pay support
I will sleep with others but you I
really love but not like with Nancy
and I will not get anyone pregnant
oh John John you deserve it die die die

the Internet's challenge to Yellow Pages

Those who ponder the value of thick yellow books thrown in front of their doors should recognize that the Yellow Pages have been a great business. Judge Harold Greene’s Consent Decree (1982) that broke up AT&T noted, “All parties concede that the Yellow Pages currently earn supra-competitive profits.”[1]  In the divestiture of AT&T, Judge Greene assigned the Yellow Pages business to the Bell local operating companies in part because state telephone regulators used Yellow Pages profits to subsidize local telephone rates.  At least through the 1980s, local telephone company Yellow Pages received 95% of Yellow Pages advertising revenue.[2] Local telephone companies largely owned the Yellow Page advertising business in their local operating territories.

Costs of selling advertising make up about half of costs for a telephone company’s Yellow Pages directory. An analysis of New York Telephone’s Yellow Pages costs in 1980 indicates that sales costs, production costs, and general and administrative costs (including promotional expenses) accounted for 45%, 23%, and 11% of total costs, respectively.  Paper, printing, and delivery costs amounted to only about 20% of total costs. Information technology has probably reduced the share of production costs, while rising materials costs have probably raised paper, printing, and delivery costs.  Selling costs are probably still about half of total costs.

The Internet’s challenge to traditional Yellow Pages concerns product quality, users habits, and new services, not the cost of paper, printing, and delivery.  Online searching is more convenient than getting a paper directory and manually looking through it.  Online information is more voluminous, more graphically attractive, and more readily kept up-to-date than information in a paper directory. Local businesses can readily purchase advertising online and create their own online presence.  Increasing a business’ local online visibility and enhancing a business’ local reputation are rather different services than selling traditional Yellow Pages advertisements.

The Yellow Pages have a sales force with established relationships with local business. What they have to sell, and what they are able to sell, is the key industry issue.

Notes:

[1] U.S. v. AT&T, Consent Decree, 552 F. Supp. 131 (D.D.C 1982) pp. 193-5.

[2] Lazarus, William Warren, The Yellow Pages: A Medium, An Industry, Ph.D. Dissertation, MIT, 1984, p. 491;  Evan D. White and Michael F. Sheehan, “Monopoly, The Holding Company, and Asset Stripping: The Case of Yellow Pages,” Journal of Economic Issues, v. 26, n. 1 (Mar. 1992) p. 161 states the telephone company (utility) publishers controlled more than 96% of Yellow Pages advertising revenue, citing US West 1986 Fact Book and Statistical Summary, p. 18.

historical perspective on bad debt

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Bell System local telephone operating companies had $12.8 million in uncollectible revenue.  That was 1.3% of total operating revenue, up from about 0.4% of total operating revenue in the early 1920s.  Perhaps new measures addressing uncollectibles were instituted about 1934.  In any case, in 1934 uncollectibles fell to 0.34% of operating revenues. From 1934 to 1952, uncollectibles varied about this level, with a low of 0.18% in 1945 and a high of 0.49% in 1938.

Relative to 1932, and even relative to today, 2005 was a year of halcyon prosperity. In that year, U.S. telecommunications corporations’ income statement deductions for bad debt amounted to 1.45% of their total receipts.

* * *

Data: Bell System income statement items, as reported in AT&T Annual Reports from 1920 to 1952. U.S. telecommunications corporations’ data from Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income, Table 6: Returns of Active Corporations, 2005, column 64.