At 05:07 PM 9/13/00 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Tipsters,
>
>I thought all that backmasking stuff had been pretty conclusively debunked --
>does anyone have a reference?
Yes, see Vokey & Read (1985). Subliminal messages: Between the devil and
the Media. American Psychologist, 40, 1231-1239.
I'm *REALLY* sorry I can't remember who it was, but last year on TIPS, someone
mentioned the above article and a corresponding cassette tape that plays
Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" backwards, in addition to the
23rd Psalm and Jabberwocky. Indeed, there is a section from the Queen song
that sounds like "It's fun to smoke marijuana." However, there is also a
section
in Jabberwocky that sounds like, "Saw a girl with a weasel in her mouth."
The point of the tape, which makes a good classroom exercise, is that backward
speech will frequently sound like forward speech. And, once you are primed
to hear
something, it is clear as day. I played the Jabberwocky tape in my class,
without
telling students what to listen for, and no one heard the "weasel"
phrase. However,
after I told them what to listen for, they all heard it, clear as day.
I think the main point to get across to students is that even IF backward
messages
were regularly inserted into songs, that doesn't mean that they are (1)
perceived
at a conscious or unconscious level, or (2) effective at influencing
behavior. The
Vokey and Read paper (among others) demonstrates that, with respect to
auditory backmasking at least, neither (1) nor (2) hold up to scrutiny.
-Mike
************************************************
Michael J. Kane
Department of Psychology
P.O. Box 26164
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402-6164
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 336-256-1022
fax: 336-334-5066
