Psychology and Related Sciences.
One of the most conspicuous developments since World War II has been the application by psychologists, sociologists, and persons in related field of quantifying techniques. The introduction of rigorous scientific requirements of number into the attempted reportage of propaganda behavior or propaganda results is having a significant effect. Quantification may not obtain everything which its devotees claim for it. There is a wide area of human behavior which is significant to the ordinary person, or even to the expert in descriptive terms, and which loses much of its significance if the descriptive and allusive terms are replaced by measurements, tables, and graphs. There is, however, no danger that quantification will replace description as the sole tool of research in the propaganda field.
What quantification does do is develop a common area of discussion between propagandists and nonpropagandists. In many instances quantification can demonstrate results where allegations of failure or of success would have nothing more than personal authority to support them. Within our own particular kind of civilization quantification has a special appeal because of the American trust in engineering and in numbers. The conclusions of the Kinsey reports on men and on women seem much more authoritative to the ordinary man because they are presented with an ample garniture of numbers, even though Havelock Ellis's pioneer works in the psychology and behavior patterns of Western sex life may have been much more tangible and much more revolutionary in their time.
Projection and Research.
Another aspect of projection is left unexplored because of its immense difficulty and its dangerously unscientific character. Consider the problem this way: the United States one day before the outbreak of war with a hypothetical enemy, such as the Soviet Union, will possess a certain group of characteristics. Representative individual lives within this country can be determined to possess certain habits concerning mass communication, trust in mass communication, and response to symbols which may come through press, radio, or other mass devices.
One day after the outbreak of war the United States will change because the war has broken out.
One month after the outbreak of war the United States will no longer be the USA1 which existed on war-day. It may well have become USA25 because of the rapidity and variety of change. Three Soviet hydrogen bombs and twelve Soviet atomic bombs might change many of our national, economic, political, and psychological characteristics, and no one, not even an American, could predict this change in advance. The best he could do would be to get ready to study the change as it occurred, to understand the rate and direction of the change, and to assess the meaning of the change in light of the conduct of war.
The same would be true of the USSR; that country, like any other major country, would change under the impact of war. Who could have predicted the renascence of Russian patriotism and traditionalism resulting from the Nazi invasion of 1941? Even if we know where the Russians are as of the outbreak of war, we won't know where they will head or how fast they will head there, once war has broken out.
The scientific problem presented by attempted serious study of a U.S.-Soviet war is therefore very difficult indeed. It is really a problem involving three clusters of moving bodies. The first cluster will be the American people, their behavior, and their institutions; the second cluster, the Russians and allied peoples, their behavior and their institutions; the third cluster, the changing methods of communication existing between them.
It can be said even now, simply by referring to the character of the American people and their past history, that if the Communist leaders of the USSR start a general war, the end of that war is sure (under sets of words and ideas which have yet to be developed in the future) to involve the reconciliation of the inhabitants of the USA with the Russian people. In other words, USAv and USSRv can and must have certain relationships with each other, preeminent among which are attempts at undoing war damage, at political and cultural reconciliation, and the undertaking of the rebuilding of a world which both these great peoples can support with enthusiasm and hope.[61]