I can't believe scripts like "Mommy and I are one" work. Can you give me an example?

At Queen's College, Dr. Kenneth Parker, an attorney and psychologist, offered extra credit to students taking his law class who agreed to participate in "a study designed to see if subliminal messages can improve academic performance."

Sixty students signed up and agreed to receive subliminal programming three times a week just before class from a tachistoscope, a device which flashes a quick, bright light with a written message imbedded in it (usually 4 milliseconds). The students looked through the eyepiece of the tachistoscope and consciously saw a flash of light while they subconsciously received a message imbedded in the light.

They were divided into three groups:

Group #1 received "Mommy and I are one"
Group #2 received "The Professor and I are one"
Group #3 received a neutral message

At the end of the course, the grading was as follows:

Group #1 got A's
Group #2 got high B's
Group #3 got low B's

And after four weeks, Group #1 and Group #2 remembered more of what they had learned than Group #3.

"Mommy and I are one" has been researched in many other settings with similar results. A few exceptions have been found in its effectiveness:

• "Mommy and I are one" doesn't work if the mother wasn't called "Mommy." Then the "mother" word must be substituted.
• "Mommy and I are one" doesn't work for schizophrenics who have not differentiated from their mothers (Silverman).
• "Mommy and I are one" isn't the most effective affirmation for male dart throwers in competition. In that setting, using the phrase "Beating Dad is OK" produced the highest dart scores. Conversely, the subliminal messages "Beating Dad is wrong" produced lower dart scores. (If the sentences were given supraliminally, they didn't work at all.)