Social Hacking

  Our subconscious is the operating part of our mind that we can't really control or tell if it's there (most of the time). However, everyone has a subconscious and it is constantly effecting how we act.

  A quick example of how our subconscious is constantly at work: Say that you are sitting in a crowded restaurant with a friend. The noise level is really high and you have to concentrate on what your friend is saying. Your brain is able to, or at least trying, to filter out everything besides your friends voice. Suddenly, someone on the other side of the restaurant calls out your name and even tough the call is not much louder than the rest of the restaurant, you react and respond to the call.

  This is an example of how even if you don't listen to anything but what your friend is saying, your subconscious still pays attention to the rest and alerts you if something important happens. There have been multiple tries to use this as an way to advertise products or persuasion people, so called subliminal messaging. Subliminal messaging is targeted to your subconscious and when executed properly your conscious mind should not be aware of the message.

  Subliminal messaging has been a popular research subject for many companies. Even though that nothing has been proven, many studies show that subliminal messaging does affect our decision making. One study that I know of was performed in cinemas. Towards the end of the movie, single frames with a Coke bottle were shown. The frames flash by so quickly that the conscious mind did not react. However, when offered a Coke or a Pepsi bottle after the movie, most viewers chose Coke. Our subconscious did see the bottle.

  A good way to understand once subconscious is to look are yourself in a decision making situation. Say for example that you are choosing between two more or less unknown brands of tooth paste. If your “gut feeling” tells you to chose one of the brands, it is probably your subconscious playing with you. Try to think of any situation that you have seen or heard anything about any of the two brands. This is why advertising is so important and so powerful. Even if you don't consciously remember a commercial, your subconscious remembers it and when it comes to buying a product, you are much more likely to buy the product that you know about.

  I talked before about using others subconscious when talking to them or when trying to persuade them. Things like seed planting (post 5) is very effective and relies mostly on people's subconscious.

  The scary thing about our subconscious is that it is almost free from reasoning skills. If you succeed with planing a seed into someone's subconscious, he or she will probably start believe in what was planted. Say for example that someone was able to plant a seed in my head that said that the world is flat. The next time I am thinking about if the world is round, my gut will probably tell me that the world in reality is flat. Ok, this is an extreme example. In real life seed planting is done in much smaller doses and with more reasonable facts. However, it is still an amazingly effective technique.

  If you want to gain more knowledge about your subconscious I would start experimenting a little. See what triggers your subconscious, what things do you react to. Try to think about why you make the decisions you make. Even simple decisions, like if you take the fork or knife first from your kitchen drawer, have to come from somewhere. There are also some exercises that you can do to get better control of your subconscious. However, I will cover that at another time.