“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?” – Edward Bernays
Chapter 4 of ‘Propaganda’ by Edward Bernays is held under the microscope. Guy Evans examines how Bernays learned from his peers – Walter Lippmann, Gustave Le Bon, Graham Wallas, and Wilfred Trotter in particular, and subsequently advised governments to exclude their people from important affairs. Instead of encouraging active political participation, he adopted new theories on mass psychology that would reduce individuals to nothing more than consumers, never happy, and never satisfied. A great show as ever so enjoy, and peace!
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Chapter 4 Transcript – “The Psychology Of Public Relations”
The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter and Le Bon, who approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas, Walter Lippmann and others who continued with searching studies of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?
The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits. Mass psychology is as yet far from being an exact science and the mysteries of human motivation are by no means all revealed. But at least theory and practice have combined with sufficient success to permit us to know that in certain cases we can effect some change in public opinion with a fair degree of accuracy by operating a certain mechanism, just as the motorist can regulate the speed of his car by manipulating the flow of gasoline. Propaganda is not a science in the laboratory sense, but it is no longer entirely the empirical affair that it was before the advent of the study of mass psychology. It is now scientific in the sense that it seeks to base its operations upon definite knowledge drawn from direct observation of the group mind, and upon the application of principles which have been demonstrated to be consistent and relatively constant Continue reading
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