Subliminal Conditioning of Attitudes

Abstract

Most of the literature on attitude formation assumes that attitudes are the products of deductive integration of an individual's beliefs about an object's attributes. Two studies demonstrate that attitudes can develop without deduction from such beliefs and, indeed, without individuals' being aware of the antecedents of those attitudes. Subjects viewed nine slides of a target person going about normal daily activities; immediately preceding the presentation of each photograph was a subliminal exposure of an affect-arousing photograph. Half the subjects in each study were subliminally exposed to positive-affect-arousing photos and half to negative-affect-arousing photos. The subliminal photographs affected attitudes toward the target person and shaped beliefs about the target person's personality traits. Presumably because relevant objective data were available, the subliminal photographs apparently had less impact on judgments of the target person's physical attractiveness. These findings demonstrate conditioning of attitudes without awareness of their antecedents.