title: Conscious, but not unconscious, logo priming of brands and related words.
abstract: This study assessed whether real-life stimulus material can elicit conscious and unconscious priming. A typical masked priming paradigm was used, with brand logo primes. We used a rigorous method to assess participants' awareness of the subliminal information. Our results show that shortly presented and masked brand logos (e.g., logo of McDonald's) have the power to prime their brand names (e.g., "McDonald's") and, remarkably, words associated to the brand (e.g., "hamburger"). However, this only occurred when the logos could be categorized clearly above the consciousness threshold. Once the primes were presented close to the consciousness threshold, no subliminal influences on behavior were observed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. Gigliola.Brintazzoli@vub.ac.be
authors.forename: Gigliola
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Brintazzoli
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Soetens
authors.forename: Natacha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Deroost
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Van den Bussche
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001364:Awareness; D003243:Consciousness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D060865:Repetition Priming; D013360:Subliminal Stimulation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult