The effect of embedded words in a brief visual display.

In a replication and extension of an experiment by Eagle, Wolitzky & Klein (1966), subjects wrote brief stories describing an Object Relations Test card following exposure to a 7 x 7 letter matrix in which were embedded either neutral words or emotive words. Of six groups of subjects who participated, two groups were exposed to the matrices for 10 sec ('supraliminal control condition'), and the remaining four groups for 1 sec ('subliminal condition'). Independent judges were able to distinguish, to a significant degree, between the stories of subjects who were exposed to emotive words and those exposed to neutral words under the 'subliminal condition'; they could not distinguish, however, between the stories of subjects exposed for the longer duration ('supraliminal condition') to emotive and neutral words respectively. A crude content analysis yielded significantly more unpleasant words in stories from the subgroups exposed to emotive rather than neutral words, but again only under the very brief exposure condition, the difference being absent in supraliminal control groups. The relevance of these findings to previous experiments is discussed.