Subliminal Psychodynamic Activation: An Experiment Controlling for Major Possible Confounding Influences Outlined by Fudin

Abstract

40 and 48 subjects participated in two separate experiments aimed at reproducing the subliminal psychodynamic activation (SPA) phenomenon and taking into account the major methodological critique by Fudin (1986, 1990). Subjects were first exposed either to a full or one of all possible partial symbiotic messages and then to their anagram equivalents. Confounding and irrelevant influences were controlled; the results indicate that only the full symbiotic message improved motor performance. This strongly suggests that subjects encode the meaning of the full message and supports an interpretation in terms of an alleviation of an internal symbiotic conflict leading to a state of calmness conducive to improved motor performance.