10. The Psychology of Propaganda*1

Propaganda has always been the means by which different political or religious bodies sought to make their wills prevail; but in the past its range was short and its spread comparatively slow. Its range - at first no greater than that of the orator's unaided voice - was only gradually enlarged by the use of written circular letters, like the Epistles of St Paul, and then by the invention and slow development of printing. But in the last few years, with the coming of cheap newspapers, of the cinema, and above all of wireless, audiences or readers of a few hundred have suddenly swelled to many millions. Its range now covers the whole world, and no one outside a desert island can escape its influence. For this reason, the psychology of propaganda, or what is perhaps the same thing, the psychology of mass suggestion, has suddenly developed an enormous practical importance.

If man were wholly rational, and influenced only by such propaganda as told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, there would be no problem. But unfortunately evidence and judgment are by no means the sole determinants of his beliefs and feelings. He has always been a credulous animal, easily convinced and easily inflamed by oratory. Sometimes he can be almost hypnotized into accepting anything that is asserted with sufficient authority and force. Our problem is to discover why.