Over recent years, the issue of subliminal messages has been fiercely debated by the international scientific community, as far as its effects on the human brain go. Several studies have analyzed how we pick up this type of messages, but flaws in their designs meant that their conclusions could not be trusted. Now, a new investigation proves that the mind can, indeed, perceive subliminal messages, but shows that the negative ones are a lot easier to imprint on the mind of the viewer than the positive ones.

In the research, 50 participants were asked to watch a computer screen, on which a multitude of words appeared for very short time frames (sometimes even a fiftieth of a second). Subliminal images, through their very nature, appear and disappear across the screen at a high speed, so that the conscious mind does not “see” them. Rather, these images are imprinted directly into a person's subconscious, from where they can act on the brain directly, e! Science News reports.

Behind the new study were experts at the University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. Their efforts were financially supported by the Wellcome Trust. “There has been much speculation about whether people can process emotional information unconsciously, for example pictures, faces and words. We have shown that people can perceive the emotional value of subliminal messages and have demonstrated conclusively that people are much more attuned to negative words,” UCL Professor Nilli Lavie, the leader of the investigation group, explains.

He says that, as test subjects were watching the screens, positive (flowers, love), negative (murder, despair, agony) and neutral (kettle, ear) words appeared. After the image sequence ended, the scientists asked each of the participants to mention if the words they saw were either emotional (positive or negative), or if they were neutral. The subjects were most accurate in their responses when they identified negative emotions, a new paper in the latest issue of the scientific journal Emotion shows.

“Clearly, there are evolutionary advantages to responding rapidly to emotional information. We can't wait for our consciousness to kick in if we see someone running towards us with a knife or if we drive under rainy or foggy weather conditions and see a sign warning 'danger.' Negative words may have more of a rapid impact. 'Kill your speed' should be more noticeable than 'Slow down.' More controversially, highlighting a competitor's negative qualities may work on a subliminal level much more effectively than shouting about your own selling points,” the expert concludes.