Grappig dat Vicary’s onderzoek een scam was, hij wordt verder ook niet genoemd op wikipedia.

“After many failed attempts to replicate these findings in controlled laboratory settings (..), Vicary finally admitted that he made up the results to save his unsuccessful advertising business”.

Although then already not unknown to alot of psychologists anymore, the big amount of media-attention was first given to the subject of subliminality when James Vicary (1957) published his results from an experiment he had performed in a New Jersey theater. He conducted his experiment during the movie ’Picnic’, using a tachistoscope Vicary flashed the messages “Drink Coca-Cola” and “Hungry? Eat popcorn” at the speed of one third of a millisecond, once every five seconds. According to Vicary, the sales of popcorn and Coca-Cola had shown an increase of 57,8% and 18,1% (respectively). Naturally, the media went wild after that, as did the public.
After a short while, however, Henri Link became suspicious and challenged Vicary to reconduct the experiment, who agreed. Nevertheless Link’s suspicions were proven to be correct when the results, from the second time Vicary conducted his experiment, showed no significant rise whatsoever in sales for either popcorn or soda.

Tot twits.