Crystallizing Public Opinion

by Edward L. Bernays

It is precisely this interlapping of groups—the variety, the inconsistency of the average man’s mental, social and psychological commitments which makes possible the gradual change from one state of affairs or from one state of mind to another. Few people are life members of one group and of one group only. The ordinary person is a very temporary member of a great number of groups. This is one of the most powerful forces making for progress in society because it makes for receptivity and open-mindedness. The modification which results from the inconstancy of individual commitments may be accelerated and directed by conscious effort. These changes which come about so stealthily that they remain unobserved in society until long after they have taken place, can be made to yield results in chosen directions.

Changed external conditions must be taken into account by the public relations counsel in his work.

Such changes carry with them modifications in the interests and points of view of those they affect. They make it possible to modify group and individual reaction. The public relations counsel, too, can modify the results of the changed external condition by calling attention to it or interpreting it in terms of the interest of those affected.

The radio might be taken as an example. In considering the radio from the standpoint of his work, the public relations counsel has a new medium which can readily reach huge sections of the public with his message. The public relations counsel must be ready to estimate, too, what difference in viewpoint the radio will produce or has produced in any given section of the public it reaches. He will have to consider, for instance, that due to it the average farmer is much more closely in contact with the world’s events than formerly.

In the case of the radio, too, if his clients be, for instance, large manufacturers of radio supplies and demand acceleration of this changed external condition in order to increase their business, he may enlarge the radio’s field, activity and effectiveness. Or, he may stress to the public the importance of this new instrument and strengthen its prestige, so that it may better fulfill its mission as a modifier of conditions.

Changed conditions can make possible modifications in the public point of view, as can be instanced by a campaign carried on by savings banks to encourage thrift. This campaign was successful at that time because inflation made it easy for the public to see the wisdom of the doctrines preached and to act upon them.

Another example of this modification in the public point of view due to a changed condition was the demand made by the Executive Committee of the Central Trades and Labor Council of New York for the government to take over the railways of the country. Public ownership had been a pet subject for school debate for more than two decades, but it had seldom passed into the field of serious consideration by the general public. Yet the conditions of hardship created by the last strike of the railroad shopmen caused a much greater receptivity in the public mind to this idea.

The airplane slowly emerges as an important factor in the daily life of the people. What it will mean in the psychology of the nation when commuters can settle within a radius of a hundred or more miles of cities is only to be guessed at. Cities may cease to exist except as industrial centers. There will be greater groups and broader interests. There will be fewer geographic divisions.

When the automobile was first used motoring was a dangerous and thrilling sport. To-day it is found that the automobile has altered the fundamental conception of daily life held by thousands of people, both in the urban and the rural population. The automobile has removed much of the isolation of country districts. It has increased the possibility of education in them. It has caused millions of miles of excellent roads to be laid.

Changed conditions can be national or local in their import and significance. They can be as national in scope as the revolutionary introduction over night of a national prohibition law or as local as a police captain’s edict in Coney Island against stockingless feminine bathers. But they must be taken into consideration by the public relations counsel in his work if they concern in the slightest degree his particular public.