One of Hitlers propaganda guidelines was to 'Employ constant repetition of just a few ideas' and as
Joseph Goebbels head of Propaganda once said "It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. What after all a square and a circle? They are mere words and words can be moulded until they clothe ideas in disguise" With this quote in mind , it put it to the test.
I came up with the idea to first off ask 20 people to think of a circle and then tell me what colour that circle is in their head. The result were:
- Blue = 8
- Black = 1
- Green = 2
- Red = 5
- Purple = 2
- Yellow = 1
- Orange = 1
From these results you can see that the selection is very random but Blue was the overall favourite. However I wanted to change the colour in peoples head to green but i wasn't going to tell them, i was going subliminally manipulate then through constant repetition by subtly placing Green circles all around the studio. I ended up playing around 5 circles in numerous places. I put some in obvious place and some in not so obvious places (images below)
With these images stuck up, i hoped that people would carry on with there daily routine but subconsciously see these green circles. I left these circles up for around 2 and a half weeks and then asked the exact same questions as before. The results were as follows:
- Blue = 5
- Black = 2
- Green = 5
- Red = 3
- Purple = 2
- Yellow = 0
- Orange = 2
- Magenta = 1
- Indigo = 1
As you can see from the results, the colour Green stepped up from 2 to 5. Whether or not it was due to my experiment is up for debate. I couldn't really know for sure unless i done the same experiment with a larger audience with more time. However i still take this research as an success and will give myself the benefit of the doubt that i did in fact make more people choose the colour green.
This is a positive conclusion to the whole experiment and i hope to take this on board and use these techniques in my practical work by creating a advertising poster and repeating it over and over to subconsciously shape peoples views and manipulate their perceptions.
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