Here is another entry in the list of weird psychological claims related to security. This article from Wired describes a Russian system that claims to be able to reveal the intent of people during a security review. This is done by presenting “subliminal” images on a screen and asking people to recognize them. The claim is that people with terrorist intentions will be better able to recognize images related to terrorism (e.g., images of the attack on the World Trade towers).
A long time ago in work for my Master’s thesis I tested a similar idea using very brief presentations of words that might be related to what people were currently thinking. I found no differences in the ability to perceive subliminal presentations based on current thoughts, and I learned that such cognitive “priming” is probably impossible, or very, very short-lived.
Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind Homeland Security Contract
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone to many strange places in its search for ways to identify terrorists before they attack, but perhaps none stranger than this lab on the outskirts of Russia’s capital. The institute has for years served as the center of an obscure field of human behavior study — dubbed psychoecology — that traces it roots back to Soviet-era mind control research.
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