Influence and Persuasion - The Power of Subconscious Communication

As psychologists further explore the still largely unknown workings of the mind, more is learned about subconscious thinking and how it critically impacts on our attempts to influence others.

How do we experience subconscious thinking?

We experience subconscious thought in many ways. We wake from sleep to find clarity over problem issues. We have "Eureka" moments when unresolved questions are suddenly answered.  We complete a long journey having driven the last stretch on "auto pilot."

Brand logos, product strap lines, roadside hoardings, TV commercials, product placement in TV programmes all use peripheral or subconscious communication. They anchor images, sounds and thoughts in our minds, and subsequently trigger off "impulse" buying decisions. The next time you pass Macdonald's notice how you will actually experience the taste of a burger.

Music teachers and sports psychologists coach their students into a state of unconscious competence. It's just not possible to repeat all the complex mental and physical elements that combine in an instant to perform a brilliant shot. Top tennis players and golfers achieve this excellence through being in "the zone." They practice and perform all the physical elements of a brilliant shot over and over again, storing a coded memory into their brains. They anchor that coded memory with a thought or "ritual", and apply that thought or "ritual" to trigger the coded memory into action.

How do we explain it?

Things we learn are stored away in our memory rather like data being stored in folders on our computer's hard drive. Millions of thoughts, feelings, memories, responses etc., are "filed" in billions of neurons.  Chemicals "wire up" these neurons, and the brain "works" by the transmission of electrical impulses in a vast and complex electro-chemical network.   When the brain receives a message it scans the "files" for meaning; similar to the search functions of a computer. However just as we see with computer searches, or predictive text on mobile telephones, the brain anticipates intended meaning and takes short cuts to what it thinks is meant. This may not always be the intended meaning.

This gets especially interesting when we learn that the non-conscious part of this "database" could be 10 billions times larger than the conscious part.

Just how the mind scans, and the way we think, feel and respond is largely determined by the "wiring" chemicals and their state. Sleep, exercise, nutritional state, drugsand external stimuliall affect the levels and healthiness of these chemicals. For example, inadequate sleep leads to serotonin depletion which leads to melancholia and negative thinking. Rigorous exercise creates serotonin and dopamine which lead to feeling good and positive thinking. Whilst stress creates cortisol, which effectively disconnects the network, shutting down clear thinking!

We also know now that information enters the memory simultaneously through channels that are independent of conscious thinking; and that this "preconscious processing" is faster, smarter and significantly more efficient than conscious thinkingin the interpretation of stimuli, and the triggering of emotional reactions.

The left-side, right-side division of the brain also offers part of the explanation.  Left-side thinking with its sequential, logical, rule following bias suggests a more conscious analytical approach towards expected conclusions. Right-side thinking is holistic, intuitive, fantasy based, offering a more imaginative approach to possible outcomes.

So how should we work with it when communicating?

Firstly we need to accept something that is probably not new to most of us, that " the interpretation of meaning is determined 50% by visual and 40% by auditory stimuli, with the words themselves accounting for less than 10%."  But now recognise that this is a largely subconscious process and that we may well have had very little control of it in the past.

So whatever is the meaning of the words we present we must control thevisual stimuliithat we and our environment emit. Facial expression, body language, dress, animation, colour, light will all trigger subconscious recognition and interpretation of meaning.

The same applies of course toauditory stimuli.Voice pitch, accent, diction, tone of voice, even accompanying music and environmental sounds will all convey their own meaning to the listener.

To persuade effectively we have to communicate congruently through two channels. Talking directly to the conscious mind, as we "talk" indirectly with the subconscious mind through those powerful external stimuli.

Remembering as we do this that the indirect channel accesses a part of the mind that is more imaginative, more able to see the bigger picture, less prescriptive and regulated. And therefore more likely to consider what we're suggesting!!

Copyright (C) Bob Howard-Spink