Mass Control Through Mass Manipulation

In Chapter 7 of PR!, entitled “Social Psychology and the Quest for the Public Mind,” author Stuart Ewen discusses the transformation of public relations as a craft of corporate and government mind control in America.  After the end of WWI, PR agents and theorists concluded that advertisement and propaganda could be used to sway the mass public.  In order to do so, they applied psychological theories to methods of advertising in order to influence the way people felt about things and play upon their emotion in crowds.  This ultimately changed publicity which was no longer based upon rational argumentation, but instead focused on the premise of “psychological manipulation” and “seductive appeals to the subconscious recesses of mental life,” (Ewens, 132). 

Ivy Lee, a founding father of public relations stated that “We must remember that people are guided more by sentiment than by mind,” (Ewens, 132).  This statement shows how these theorists undermined the general population as not having the ability to logic during decision making.  Robert Ezra Park also undermined the intellect and ability of the general public to make decisions based on logic reasoning.  He argued that the “so-called public opinion is generally nothing more than a naïve collective impulse which can be manipulated by catchwords,” (Ewens, 135).