IMAGINATION, COGNITION AND PERSONALITY, Vol.

10(2) 117-128, 1990-91

SUBLIMINAL ACTIVATION OF INTRAPSYCHIC

CONFLICTS: SUBCONSCIOUS REALMS
OF MIND VS SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES
OF MENTATION

ROBERTG.KUNZENDORF

MICHAEL JESSES

University of Lowell

LEONARD DUPILLE
Duquesne University

WILUAM BUTLER
Connecticut College

ABSTRACT
Cognitive-state monitoring theory asserts that people perceive subliminal
stimulation without self-consciously monitoring its external innervation (as
opposed to central innervation). Thus monitoring theory predicts that
subconsciously perceived discord, in the absence of any 'external location'
cues, should be misinterpreted as centrally generated discord and should
disrupt self-generated behavior. Consistent with this prediction, mathematical
problem-solving in the current experiment was disrupted after mathematically
competitive males repeatedly heard the subliminal message IT'S WRONG
TO CRUSH DADDY stereophonically localized in the middle of their
heads-but not after they repeatedly heard this subliminal 'Oedipal' message
binaurally localized on one side of their heads. A subliminal message
binaurally localized on one side of the self should not interfere with problem-
solving behavior because, even though the message's external innervation is
not self-consciously 'monitored,' its external location is inferable from sub-
conscious cues.

117

C> 1991, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

doi: 10.2190/A8YT-5M4D-YEQQ-8F1N
http://baywood.com
118 I KUNZENDORF ET AL.

Recent psychoanalytic research furnishes evidence for the subliminal activation of

apparent Oedipal conflict [1-3], and accords with either a locational theory of
subconsciousness or a modal theory. Most of this research implicitly assumes that
subliminal messages communicating Oedipal discord "stir up unconscious con-
flict" in a subconscious mental realm, where "unconscious libidinal and aggres-
sive wishes" are located [1, pp. 625, 634]. In contrast, the cognitive-state monitor-
ing theory of self-consciousness explicitly assumes that subliminal perception is a
subconscious or 'unmonitored' mode of perceiving-in which emotionally dis-
cordant messages are not self-consciously "seen" and, hence, are misinterpreted as
self-generated discord [4-6]. The present research empirically compares these two
theoretical approaches to the subliminal activation of conflictive behaviors.
In recent experiments by Silverman, Ross, Adler, and Lustig [3], the dart-
throwing performance of normal males deteriorated when the discordant message
BEATING DAD IS WRONG was presented subliminally. The experimenters
implicitly drew two conclusions from their results. First, they concluded that
their discordant message, unlike control messages (BEATING DAD IS OK and
PEOPLE ARE WALKING), conflicts with the normal male's aggressive Oedipal
wishes. However, Balay and Shevrin have argued that other subliminally dis-
cordant messages might also produce conflictive behavior [7], and indeed,
Kunzendorf and McLaughlin have demonstrated that subliminal messages com-
municating non-Freudian discord produce greater conflict in certain instances [6].
Second, the experimenters concluded that subliminal presentations of BEATING
DAD IS WRONG, unlike supraliminal presentations of the same message, acti-
vate part of the subconscious mental realm where aggressive Oedipal wishes are
located. But as Nemiah has noted, Freud himself-unlike many non-Freudian
researchers-abandoned his early locative hypothesis for a modal theory of sub-
consciousness [8, p. 62]:

[After] Freud arrived at his structuralmodal of the mind ... the Unconscious is no
longer a division of the mind, as it was in the topographic model, but a quality of
mental functioning.

The current research tests a modal hypothesis based not on Freudian theory, but on
cognitive-state monitoring theory [4].
According to Kunzendorf's monitoring theory of self-consciousness, subliminal
percepts have the sensory qualities of supraliminal percepts, but lack the self-
conscious 'quality' or 'mode' of supraliminal percepts [4-6]. That is, subliminally
stimulated sensations are not subjectively accompanied by any self-consciousness
that one is perceiving them (rather than imaging them), because subliminally
stimulated sensations are not physiologically 'monitored' for their peripheral
innervation (as opposed to central innervation) [4]. Thus, subconsciously per-
ceived sensations of neutral items are confused with imaged sensations of
similar items [5, 9], and subliminally perceived sensations of distressing items are
 SUBLIMINAL ACTIVATION OF CONFLICTS I 119

mistaken for self-generated distress [6]. Jacoby and Kelly suggest a similar theory
of subliminal perception [10, p. 322]:

A common experience reported by subjects in [subconscious perception] experi-

ments is the feeling that an item simply "came to mind," without the accompanying
experience of having actually "seen" the item. This amounts to a confusion about the
source of an item, confusing what is actually an external source with one's own
thoughts. A confusion of this sort would be sufficient to produce unconscious
influences on performance.

The present experiment further examined the thesis that all disruptive and inter-
fering effects of subliminally perceived discord-in particular, seeming Oedipal
discord-are attributable to a lack of 'source monitoring' during subliminal
perception.
In this experiment as in Silverman, Ross, Adler, and Lustig's experiments [3],
competitive testing of male college students was conducted before and after
subliminal stimulation with Oedipal messages. But in this study as in Ariam and
Siller's experiment [11], the competitive testing involved mathematical problem-
SOlving, rather than dart-throwing performance. Also in the current study, the
subliminal messages were auditorily masked recordings of IT'S WRONG TO
CRUSH DADDY, rather than visually brief flashes of BEATING DAD IS
WRONG (which, if auditorily presented, is misperceived as BEING BAD IS
WRONG). By delivering these auditory messages over stereo headphones, the
experimenters were able to present subliminal messages with 'internal source'
cues versus subliminal messages with 'external source' cues: specifically,
'internal' subliminal messages localized directly between the two ears, due to
binaural simultaneity, versus 'external' subliminal messages with binaural time
differences inducing sound-localization on one side of the head [12]. The experi-
menters predicted that repetitions of an 'external' subliminal message would not
interfere with math scores because, even though its external innervation is not
self-consciously 'monitored, , its external location can be subconsciously inferred
from sensory cues.

METHOD

Subjects
Male subjects were sampled from General Psychology classes at the University
of Lowell, and were screened for sound localization. During this screening,
SUbjects were binaurally stimulated with a 2000 Hz, 75 dB SPL tone in Koss
K/40LC earphones, and were asked whether they heard the tone (a) in front of the
head (b) above the head (c) behind the head (d) in the middle of the head (e) on
one side of the head (f) elsewhere. Eighty subjects who localized the screening
tone "in the middle of the head" were randomly assigned to four treatment groups:
120 I KUNZENDORF ET AL.

a control group stimulated by Supraliminal Messages, a control group stimu-

lated by No Messages, an experimental group stimulated by 'Internal' Subliminal
Messages, and an experimental group stimulated by 'External' Subliminal
Messages.

Auditory Stimuli

Stimuli preparation-The four treatment-group stimuli were four-minute, two-

track-stereo tape recordings. All four tapes were recorded at the University of
Lowell's College of Music, in a sound studio equipped with a Delta Labs digital
delay unit. Each tape was played back in the University of Lowell's Music
Library, on an Aiwa AD-SIS cassette deck with Symetrix stereo amplifiers.
On each of the four tapes, the two tracks stereophonically presented four
minutes of Rampal's "Duet in G for two flutes" at an average amplitude of 75 dB
SPL [13]. On the control tape heard by the Supraliminal Messages group, the two
tracks also presented a male voice repeating IT'S WRONG TO CRUSH DADDY
every twenty seconds for four minutes, in both ears simultaneously, at a peak
amplitude of 80 dB SPL. On the control tape heard by the No Messages group, the
two tracks presented only the Rampal music.
On both of the tapes heard by experimental groups, the two tracks of Rampal
music also contained the male voice repeating IT'S WRONG TO CRUSH
DADDY every twenty seconds. But on both tapes, this repeating message was
presented at a peak amplitude of 60 dB SPL in each earphone (15 dB DPL below
the average amplitude of the foreground music). Also, on the experimental tape
heard by the 'Internal' Subliminal Message group, the repeating message was
presented to both ears simultaneously. However, on the experimental tape heard
by the 'External' Subliminal Messages group, the repeating message was pre-
sented 5 msecs earlier in the left-ear track than in the right-ear track (but at an
amplitude of 60 dB SPL in both tracks).

Stimuli testing-Informal and formal tests of the auditory stimuli were con-
ducted, in order to ensure that the two Subliminal messages were 1) perceived
without self-consciousness, 2) perceived with equal clarity, and 3) perceived in
their entirety. At the outset of informal testing, six experimentally naive subjects
listened to both of the Subliminal tapes, and both of the Subliminal messages were
reportedly perceived as meaningless muttering. Subsequently, the six subjects
listened to the Supraliminal tape, and the Supraliminal message was meaningfully
perceived and correctly reported. Finally, after the subjects were told to expect the
same message on the two Subliminal tapes, the 'Internal' Subliminal message was
meaningfully perceived "in the middle of the head," and the 'External' Subliminal
message was meaningfully perceived "on the left side of the head"-consistent
with subception evidence relating message perceptibility to perceiver expecta-
tions [6 (footnote 2), 14-16].
 SUBUMINALACTlVATlON OFCONFUCTS I 121

For purposes of formal testing (via signal-detection methods), eighty-four two-

second segments of flute music were recorded from the above tapes onto a new
'test tape.' The resulting 'test tape' contained twenty-eight musical segments with
the 'Internal' Subliminal message, twenty-eight musical segments with the
'External' Subliminal message, and twenty-eight musical segments with no
message-in a random order, at ten-second intervals. Sixteen experimentally
naive students from the University of Lowell subject pool listened two times to the
entire 'test tape.' The first time, they were instructed to write down any messages
they heard; none of the sixteen subjects wrote down either the correct message or
a message containing WRONG, CRUSH, or DADDY. The second time, subjects
were administered one of two signal-detection tasks. Half of the sixteen subjects,
as they heard each musical segment a second time, rated whether they were
1) "confident that [they] heard the message IT'S WRONG TO CRUSH
DADDY," 2) "somewhat confident that [they] heard the message IT'S WRONG
TO CRUSH DADDY," 3)"somewhat confident that [the] did not hear IT'S
WRONG TO CRUSH DADDY," or 4) "confident that [they] did not hear the
message IT'S WRONG TO CRUSH DADDY." The other eight subjects rated
whether they were 1) "confident that [they] heard a message containing the word
WRONG," 2) "somewhat confident that [they] heard a message containing the
word WRONG," 3) "somewhat confident that [they] did not hear a message
containing WRONG," or 4) "confident that [they] did not hear a message contain-
ing the word WRONG." Both for sentence-detection and for word-detection, two
values of A' (a distribution-free measure of signal detection) were computed. One
of these values-the subject'sA' score for 'internal' subliminal messages-repre-
sents the area under the three-point operating characteristic derived from 'internal
subliminal' hit rates and 'no message' false-alarm rates. The other value-the
SUbject's A' score for 'external subliminal' messages-represents the area under
the three-point operating characteristic derived from 'external subliminal' hit rates
and 'no message' false-alarm rates. Table 1 contains the mean values of A' for
'internal subliminal' sentence-detection, 'external subliminal' sentence-detection,
'internal subliminal' word-detection, and 'external subliminal' word-detection.
An analysis of variance revealed that the small difference between 'internal
subliminal' and 'external subliminal' detection was not significant [F(1,14) =
1.42], that the larger difference between sentence- and word-detection was not
significant [F(1,14) = 1.05], and that the two-way interaction was not significant
[F(1,14) = 0.63].
From these results of stimuli testing, three conclusions can be drawn. First,
despite the fact that our subjects could not freely recall or consciously identify any
critical words from the target sentence after subconsciously listening to it fifty-six
times, they could make behavioral responses and statistical decisions regarding
either the target sentence (IT'S WRONG TO CRUSH DADDY) or a target word
(WRONG). Consistent with this first conclusion, recent research by Lombardi,
Higgins, and Bargh and by Cheesman and Merikle confirms that subliminal
122 I KUNZENDORF ET AL.

Table 1. Mean A' (and SO) for Sentence-

versus Word-Detection in 'Internal' and
'External' Subliminal Messages

Detection of Detection of
the sentence a message
It's wrong to containing the
crush daddy word wrong.

'Internal' .90 (.17) .96 (.07)

subliminal
messages

'External' .91 (.13) .98 (.02)

subliminal
messages

stimuli are not consciously recallable, but are capable of being detected and of
otherwise affecting behavior [16, 17]. Second, our subjects could detect equally
well the 'internal' subliminal message and the 'external' subliminal message.
Thus in our actual experiment, if only the 'internal' subliminal message effec-
tively interferes with math performance, then the ineffectiveness of the 'external'
subliminal message cannot be attributed to less clarity or less recognizability.
Third, our subjects could not detect the target word WRONG significantly better
than they could detect the target sentence IT'S WRONG TO CRUSH DADDY.
This final conclusion anticipates Greenwald's argument that subliminally acti-
vated disturbances (in math performance, e.g.) are activated not by all of the
words in a subliminal message, but by one critical word (the disturbing word
wrong, e.g.) [18, 19]. However, this third conclusion does not anticipate the
counter-argument that a ceiling effect in word detection may have eliminated any
possibility of statistical significance. The implications of this possibility will be
further discussed later in this article.

Procedure

Throughout the experiment, subjects sat at listening stations in the Univer-

sity of Lowell's Music Library, and wore Koss K/40LC earphones. Two to
sixteen subjects, representing different treatment groups, were tested at one
time.
After 'sound localization' screening, as described above, all subjects were
given ten minutes (instead of the recommended twenty minutes) to answer
fifteen multiple-choice math problems (the 15 odd-numbered problems on the
 SUBUMINAL ACTIVATION OF CONFUCTS I 123

Mathematical Association of America's Basic Skills Test A-SK [20]). Imme-

diately thereafter, individual subjects were binaurally presented the four-minute
tape recording corresponding to their treatment group, and were instructed "just
to listen to the relaxing music" and "not to think about math." At the conclusion
of the tape recording, subjects were instructed to write down any message they
heard during the music. Finally, all subjects were given ten more minutes to
solve fifteen more problems (the 15 even-numbered problems on the Basic Skills
TestA-SK).

RESULTS
All of the subjects who heard the Supraliminal control tape identified the
message as IT'S WRONG TO CRUSH DADDY. In contrast, none of the subjects
who heard one of the two subliminal tapes identified either the correct message or
a message containing WRONG, CRUSH, or DADDY. The effects of the two
control tapes and two Subliminal tapes on mathematical problem-solving are
summarized in Table 2.
On the average, all twenty members of the 'Internal' Subliminal Message group
solved .48 of the fifteen pre-message problems (SD = .18) and .48 of the fifteen
post-message problems (SD = .17). But as Table 1 reveals, the seven mathemati-
cally able members (who answered more than 8 pre-message problems and solved

Table 2. Mean Proportion (and SO) of Math Problems Solved Correctly,

by Groups Receiving Control Messages versus Subliminal Messages

Ability group

Message group

Before message After message Difference

Good math ability

Supraliminal [n=7) .66 (.10) .67 (.22) -.01 (.24)
No message [n=9] .65(.14) .64 (.24) .01 (.24)
Internal sub!. [n=7) .65 (.15) .49 (.16) .16 (.13)
External sub!. [n=9] .59 (.09) .62 (.14) -.03 (.16)

Poor math ability

Supraliminal [n=13] .37 (.09) .36 (.10) .01 (.13)
No message [n=11] .38 (.09) .39 (.14) -.02 (.14)
Internal sub!. [n=13] .39 (.12) .48 (.18) -.09 (.13)
External sub!. [n=11] .41 (.08) .52 (.10) -.11 (.09)
124 I KUNZENDORF ET AL.

more than two-thirds of those answered) solved .65 of the fifteen pre- message
problems and only .49 of the post-message problems. It is not clear whether the
absence of post-message math disruption in less able subjects was produced by
floor effects in their math performance, or by some other factor that has produced
insignificant task disruption in one-fourth of all subliminal- activation studies [2,
7]. In any case, the other three 'message groups' in Table 2 were also crossed with
good versus poor 'ability groups,' as defined above, and were then compared with
the 'Internal' Subliminal Message group.
For purposes of statistical comparison, the proportion of post-message problems
solved correctly was subjected to an Analysis of Covariance. The within-subject
covariate was the proportion of pre-message problems solved correctly. The
between-subjects factors were the 'message groups' variable and the 'ability
groups' variable. The analysis revealed no main effect of message groups (F[3,71]
= 1.24) and no main effect of ability groups (F[l,71] = 0.10), but a significant
interaction between message groups and ability groups (F[3,71] =3.06, P < .05).
A planned comparison confirmed that the 7 'Internal' Subliminal subjects with
good math ability solved fewer post-message problems than the other 25 subjects
with good math ability solved (F[1,29] =4.17,p =.05). An unplanned comparison
indicated that the thirteen 'Internal' Subliminal subjects with poor math ability did
not solve more post-message problems than the other thirty-five subjects with
poor math ability solved (F[1,45] = 1.70). Another unplanned comparison indi-
cated that the eleven 'External' Subliminal subjects with poor math ability did not
solve more post-message problems than the other thirty-seven subjects with poor
math ability solved (F[1,45] = 3.79).

DISCUSSION
In the present experiment, mathematical problem solving was disrupted after
mathematically competitive males repeatedly heard the subliminal message IT'S
WRONG TO CRUSH DADDY stereophonically localized in the middle of their
heads, but not after they repeatedly heard this subliminal Oedipal message
binaurally localized on one side of their heads. Such findings are readily explained
by Kunzendorfs cognitive-state monitoring theory [4]. Based on previous empir-
ical findings [4-6], monitoring theory asserts that subliminal or 'unmonitored'
messages are unaccompanied by any self-consciousness that one is perceiving
them (rather than imaging them), and that subliminal or 'unmonitored' message of
distress are mistaken for self-generated distress. Extended to the current findings,
monitoring theory explains why the 'side of the head' subliminal message did not
disrupt problem-solving: because, even though such a message's external inner-
vation is not self-consciously 'monitored,' its external location is subconsciously
inferred from binaural differences.
The disruption associated with the 'middle of the head' subliminal message,
however, may not have been caused by the entire message. It may have been
 SUBLIMINAL ACTIVATION OF CONFLICTS / 125

caused by one word in the subliminal message: the mathematically disruptive

word WRONG. (As previously noted, stimuli testing was designed to rule out
such a possibility, but was foiled by the ceiling effect for word detection.) Disrup-
tion by the 'internal' subliminal word WRONG seems to us consistent with the
fact that disruption was limited to mathematically competent males. Indeed,
Strauman and Higgins have shown that potentially disruptive emotion can be
produced by a subliminal word like WRONG, but only in a subject whose
cognitive structure fails to match the word [21]. Accordingly, the present effect
may have been caused not by the 'internal' Oedipal message IT'S WRONG TO
CRUSH DADDY, but by the seemingly self-generated word WRONG.
In any event, underlying the present effect are two subconscious phenomena:
the abnormal phenomenon of subconscious agitation, and the normal phenome-
non of subliminal perception. In conjunction with past research on cognitive-state
monitoring, the current research implies that both phenomena reflect an unmoni-
tored or subconscious 'mode' ofexperiencing sensations.
In the case of subconscious agitation, the implications of monitoring theory are
notably different from those of psychoanalytic theory. According to Freud's
psychoanalytic theory, fear and anger tend to be 'repressed' into a subconscious
mental realm, and disguised manifestations of subconscious agitation tend to
'surface' as soon as repression is relaxed. By implication, the bizarre imagery
'surfacing' in REM sleep and hypnotic somnolence serves to disguise subcon-
sciously 'surfacing' fear and anger. Contrary to this Freudian implication, how-
ever, research by Kunzendorf shows that somnolent subjects no longer 'monitor'
whether consciously lingering fear is 'emoted' or 'visually expressed' and, conse-
quently, they bizarrely assimilate consciously fearful sensations into concomitant
visual memories [22]. No 'repression' into a subconscious realm is implicated in
this assimilative mode of visualizing.
Indeed, 'repression' itself is a mode of processing fearful information: a mode
in which subjects suspend their self-awareness that they are perceiving fearful
stimulation, as research by Kunzendorf and McLaughlin has demonstrated [6].
This selective suspension of monitoring provides immediate relief from fearful
stimuli, Freudian or otherwise, but it does so at the risk of turning self-conscious
fear into subconscious anxiety (into consciously lingering fear without a self-
consciously perceived source). No subconscious realm full of lurking fears is
implicated in this 'unmonitored' mode ofself-protection. All that is implicated is
an unconscious storehouse of potentially fearful memories-potentially fearful
but sensationless memories, which can be 'suppressed' from conscious sensory
representation or 'constructed' into conscious memory images or 'subconsciously
represented' as unself-consciously imaged sensations [23].
In the case of subliminal perception, monitoring theory's modal approach
synthesizes opposing arguments concerning the operational definition of such
perception. At one extreme, Dixon [24] and Marcel [25, 26] have argued that all
perceptual features are discriminated either 'preconsciously' or 'unconsciously,'
126 I KUNZENDORF ET AL.

definition, features passinginto realms ofperceptual consciousness-which rules

out any possibility of subliminal perception. In between these two extremes,
monitoring theory concedes that all discriminable features are conscious sen-
sations, but maintains that some conscious sensations are 1) stimulated
'subliminally', 2) processed without any physiological 'monitoring' of their
peripheral innervation, and 3) experienced without any self-consciousness that
one is perceiving them (rather than imaging them).
In other words, subliminal perception is an unmonitored and unself-conscious
'mode' of perceiving conscious sensations. In subjective terms, it is a 'mode' in
which I am "aware of the stimulus without being aware of this awareness" [29,
p. 294]. In psychophysical terms, it is a 'mode' in which stimuli are detected
below the "limen" [30], below the "subjective threshold" for self-conscious per-
ception (as opposed to the more sensitive "objective threshold" for behavioral
detection, (/ = 0) [17]. Moreover, detection theory's critique of this "subjective
threshold"-as nothing more than "subjective confidence" (beta) [31]-is cir-
cumvented by monitoring theory's operational definition of the limen-as a less
sensitive threshold that determines whether perceptually detectable sensations are
distinguishable from imaged sensations or indistinguishable from imaged sensa-
tions [5, 6]. Thus, subjects do not recall perceiving a subliminally experienced
message because they interpret such experience as imaginary; but at the same
time, they do discriminate the subliminally experienced message from previously
unexperienced noise.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful to Will Moylan, Professor of Music Technology at the
University of Lowell, for his assistance in generating stimuli for this experiment.

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University of Lowell
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Lowell, MA 01854