Is “Love at First Sight” really “Love BEFORE First Sight?”

November 24th, 2010 | Author: Leil Lowndes

Do you remember the big ruckus about subliminal advertising in movie theaters some years ago? Clever Madison Ave types flashed words like “Hungry?” “Get popcorn!”andeven product names like “Lipton tea” on the screen for thousandths of a second during the film. It flickered too fast for the audience to actually “see” the messages. But theaters sold whole a lot more popcorn on those days! And unlike previously, movie goers who just ordered “tea,” now requested it by brand. Lipton of course. Not only was the audience unable to read the messages, they reported they hadn’t seen anything at all! But those milliseconds of words on the screen still made them hungry, and told them what to buy.

So if people can “read” in thousands of a second, do you think they can get a sense of your personality in that amount of time? I was surprised and saddened by one study which took place in our supposedly “enlightened” decade. Researchers exposed subjects to screen flashes of individuals from different races so fast they couldn’t “see” them. It was, as neuroscientists call it, “sensory stimuli below an individual’s absolute threshold for conscious perception.” Yet the viewing subjects had chemical reactions ranging from affection to fear.

The part of your brain responsible for vision is your Occipital lobe. It has the amazing ability to detect form, color and motion — even before the thinking part of the brain realizes that something is up. Mother Nature programmed us that way so warning chemicals will race through our system immediately. For example if something huge and yellow with black stripes is leaping toward you, you run like heck before your brain gets the message that, “OMG a tiger is attacking me!!!”
So is love at first sight really love BEFORE first sight?” Do lovers feel the chemistry before their brains register, “This person is hot?”

But then being CONSCIOUS of that feeling is a different story. How long do you think it takes to KNOW you really have chemistry with this person? Minutes? Hours? Weeks?



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