Crystallizing Public Opinion

by Edward L. Bernays

The instinct of repulsion with its attendant emotion of disgust is not often called upon by the public relations counsel in his work.

On the other hand, curiosity and wonder are continually employed. In Governmental work, particularly, the statesman who has an announcement to make is continually exhausting every effort to arouse public interest in advance of the actual announcement. Feelers are often sent out to the public to help create curiosity.

It is interesting to note, too, that even book publishers rely upon the element of wonder, termed suspense in drama, to increase their public and their sales. Our now famous “What is wrong with this picture?” advertisements, and those used for the O. Henry books illustrate this point.

Pugnacity with its attendant emotion of anger is a human constant. The public relations counsel uses this continually in constructing all kinds of events that will call it into play. Because of it, too, he is often forced to enact combats and create issues. He stages battles against evils in which the antagonist is personified for the public. New York City, when it wants to reduce the death rate from tuberculosis, aligns its citizens yearly in a fight against the disease and continues the idea of combat by announcing the number of victims from year to year. It uses the terminology of warfare in these bulletins. Such phrases in this or other health campaigns as “kill the germs,” “swat the fly,” illustrate this point. The public responds to a battle in a way that it might not respond to a plea to take care of itself or to do its civic duty.

Under pugnacity would come that technique of the public relations counsel which is continually devising tests and contests. Mr. Martin, in his experience as director of the Cooper Union Forum, noticed that the sort of interest which will most easily bring an assemblage of people together is most commonly an issue of some kind.

On the one hand, says Mr. Martin:[28] “I have seen efforts made in New York to hold mass meetings to discuss affairs of the very greatest importance, and I have noted the fact that such efforts usually fail to get out more than a handful of specially interested persons, no matter how well advertised, if the subject to be considered happens not to be of a controversial nature. On the other hand, if the matter to be considered is one about which there is keen partisan feeling and popular resentment—if it lends itself to the spectacular personal achievement of one whose name is known, especially in the face of opposition or difficulties—or if the occasion permits of resolutions of protest, of the airing of wrongs, of denouncing a business of some kind, or of casting statements of external principles in the teeth of ‘enemies of humanity,’ then, however trivial the occasion, we may count on it that our meeting will be well attended.

“It is this element of conflict, directly or indirectly, which plays an overwhelming part in the psychology of every crowd. It is the element of contest which makes baseball so popular. A debate will draw a larger crowd than a lecture. One of the secrets of the large attendance of the forum is the fact that discussion—‘talking back’—is permitted and encouraged. The Evangelist Sunday undoubtedly owes the great attendance at his meetings in no small degree to the fact that he is regularly expected to abuse some one.

“Nothing so easily catches general attention and creates a crowd as a contest of any kind. The crowd unconsciously identifies its members with one or the other competitor. Success enables the winning crowd to ‘crow’ over the losers. Such an occasion becomes symbolic and is utilized by the ego to enhance its feeling of importance.”

The public relations counsel finds in the instinct of pugnacity a powerful weapon for enlisting public support for or public opposition to a point of view in which he is interested. On this principle, he will, whenever possible, state his case in the form of an issue and enlist, in support of his side, such forces as are available.

The dangers of the method must be recognized and borne in mind. Pugnacity can be enlisted on the side of decency and progress. He who looks at it from that point of view will agree with Mr. Pulitzer, the great publisher, that it seems neither extraordinary nor culpable that “people and press should be more interested in the polemical than in the platitudinous; in blame than in painting the lily; in attack than in sending laudatory coals to Newcastle.” On the other hand, the instinct of pugnacity can be utilized to suppress and to oppress. From the point of view of the public relations counsel, who is interested from day to day in accomplishing definite results on specific issues, the dangers of the method are only the ordinary dangers of every weapon, physical or psychological, which has been devised.