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Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification ed. by Rodney Needham (review)
- Leonardo
- The MIT Press
- Volume 9, Number 4, Autumn 1976
- pp. 334-335
- Review
- Additional Information
334 Books In the second group are Chapters 2, 5, 6, 12, 13 and 14. In the first three of these, the common traits, individual differences and cultural variations in environmental perception and attitudes are briefly sketched. The last three focus on people’s responses to various street scenes, the differences in valuations of cities in the USA . and the search for environment in suburbs and new towns. The book covers a wide range of topics and will benefit largely newcomers to the area of environmental perception, attitudes and values. This will be facilitated by the pleasant writing style. Artists may find of particular interest the brief sections on the relationship between colour and spatial psychology and symbolism, the effect of the age of a person on perception and ideas of cosmography on landscape painting. However the lack of discussion on the precise relationships between values, perceptions, attitudes (not to mention cognition) and topophilia made it difficult for me to grasp the overall structure of the book. Subliminal Perception: The Nature of a Controversy. N. F. Dixon. McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead, England, 1971. 363 pp., illus. Subliminal Seduction: Ad Media’s Manipulation of a Not So Innocent America. Wilson Bryan Key. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973. 206 pp., illus. Reviewed by Robert Baldwin* Subliminal perception for many people implies abusive mind control, for example when used in commercial advertising (see comments on second book, below). Unfortunately , this psychological phenomenon has been the victim of a ‘bad press’ for the past 20 years, especially in the U.S.A., which has retarded research on the subject. Dixon’s book is a serious effort to counter this situation. He holds the reader’s interest as he describes the experiments made of the phenomenon over many years by numerous psychologists and physiologists, including those that he has carried out. His British background perhaps leads him to present a more unbiased approach to the phenomenon. He points out that many psychologists in the USA. have cast doubt on the existence of subliminal perception, which has further retarded research. He is convinced that when the phenomenon is better understood, its application will have major social consequences. Dixon’s book opens with a brief history of early speculations about the phenomenon by philosophers in ancient Greece and by, for example, the German philosophermathematician von Leibnitz and ends with a review of research work done in the 1950’s and ’60’s. He examines the principal point of contention among psychologists, not whether there is an unconscious visual reception by the brain of below-threshold stimuli, but whether or not the stimuli subsequently affect conscious human actions. He provides the experimental evidencethat he finds conclusively proves that the phenomenon does affect subsequent human actions. Although the book is not written in a popular style, the basic ideas discussed can be understood by nonspecialists, for exampleSignal Detection Theory (SDT) and Adaptation Level (AL). This book should be a welcome relief to those who wish to obtain a balanced view of this contentious subject . A careful reading of it should dispel much of the hysteria surrounding subliminal perception and promote quiet reflection on its future implications. The book by Key will frighten even the most casual reader. The concepts, images and statistics skillfully woven into the text, indicate that the use of subliminal perception is disturbing . People in the U.S.A. are being manipulated, Key tells the reader, by a heavy bombardment of subliminal images that are designed for producers of nonessential consumer goods to lure viewers into buying them. The book by Dixon supports Key’s review of the factual aspects of the phenomenon. That commercial corporations should embrace the use of the phenomenon as a legitimate advertising ploy can be taken to mean that it is considered effective. Key makes the point that large scale manipulation of society by private interests is not unlawful in the U.S.A., in spite of the scare caused by reactions to certain Coca-Cola advertisements in 1956. He deplores the fact that the public believes that Congress outlawed such practices at that time. A law against the use of the phenomenon was proposed, but it was not passed...