Anthony Greenwald and his colleagues (1991, 1992) randomly assigned university students to listen daily for five weeks to commercial subliminal messages claiming to improve either self-esteem or memory. But the researchers switched half the labels. Some students who thought they were receiving affirmations of self-esteem were actually hearing the memory-enhancement message. Others got the self-esteem message but thought their memory was being recharged. The researchers found that: __________________

Answer: Students' test results for self-esteem and memory, taken before and after the five weeks, showed no modifications but the students felt they had received the benefits they anticipated.

Explanation:

The results proved that the subliminal self-help tapes didn´t have the effect claimed by the manufacturers. Nonetheless, the students´ judgments of their improvement matched their expectations: those who believed they had received the self-esteem tapes were more inclined to state that their self-esteem had increased, while those who believed they had heard a memory tape were more prone to say their memory had enhanced despite the real subliminal content.