The Ohio State Social Behavior Interest Group kicked off the first meeting of the quarter with a speech by professor Mark Zanna yesterday.

Zanna, a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo, shared his research projects and results with OSU in his speech “Subliminal Priming and Persuasion: Striking When the Iron is Hot.”

Along with professor Steve Spencer and graduate student Erin Strahan, Zanna’s project tested whether subliminal messages can affect opinions of two products based on their advertising.

In his first study, Zanna said he tested whether thirst related words influenced opinions of two sports drinks. The “Super-Quencher” drink advertised it was good at quenching thirst, while “PowerPro” promised to be better for your body.

The results sided with the opinions of Zanna and his colleagues. A greater number of subjects liked the “Super-Quencher” more after seeing subliminal messages aimed at making them thirsty.

“Our results suggest that while our participants were relatively thirsty to begin with, subliminal priming did appear to activate the desire to quench their thirst and to increase their actual drinking,” he said.

Zanna’s research continued with another experiment testing moods, instead of thirst.

“We wanted to see if we could subliminally prime moods, specifically sadness,” he said.

Zanna said his colleagues used the same subliminal messages procedure to make his subjects sad. The subjects were then tested on enjoyment of two different types of music, based on whether they would interact with other participants later on.

Participants listened to two styles of music. Results showed subjects were more likely to listen to “Good Times” by the Tweed Monkeys than “Breaking the Silence” by Crystal Hammer because the Tweed Monkeys album promised to be more uplifting than the album by Crystal Hammer.

He and his colleagues are aware of the possibility of their research being used for immoral purposes, but continue their work, Zanna said.

“We believe that one way to control such techniques is to understand how they work,” he said.

Zanna has been teaching at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada since 1975. He received his doctorate from Yale in 1970 and taught at Princeton from 1970 to 1975. His research focuses on the psychology of attitudes, specifically prejudice.