Experiments on Mass Communication

Carl I Hovland, Arthur A Lumsdaine, Fred D Sheffield

Robert K Merton is Experimental Consultant

Princeton University Press, 1949 

Volume 3 of a 4 volume set on Studies in Social Psychology in World War II

I. The American Soldier: Adjustment During Army Life

II. The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath

III. Experiments on Mass Communication

IV. Measurement and Prediction 

Organized by the Research Branch of the Army's Information and Education Division

Surveyed by the Survey section of the Branch

Controlled experimentation by the Experimentation section

Their job was to make experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of various programs of the Information Education Division, including orientation and information films.

This is a list of other things they studied, other than the films mentioned in this book:

• "Yank", the Army weekly magazine
• library card records
• "the optimal phonetic representation of foreign language words"
• radio listening habits and program preferences of patients by direct observation in army hospitals
• unit orientation programs
• comparisons between commentator and documentary radio presentations
• comparisons between physical conditioning programs for the War Department
• veterans' reports of fear-producing effects of various kinds of enemy weapons and tactics for the Office of the Surgeon General
• optimal time for trainees first jump for the Paratroop School at Fort Benning
• redeployment interviews for for Air Corp

For this book, the topic is about morale, leadership, and training programs, and specifically military training films for the Military Training Division of the Armed Services Forces.

"The "Why We Fight" films constituted probably the largest scale attempt yet made in this century to use films as a means of influencing opinion" p21

On Recognition of Propaganda - of the minority who did criticize the films as propaganda, they were also more educated, and thus more articulate, and capable of influencing others p88

On the Meaning of Propaganda (according to those critical soldiers)

• untruthful or biased presentation, distortion of facts
• manipulative purpose or motive p88-89

Characteristics of Propaganda (again according to those critical soldiers)

• one-sidedness, ie only showing the strength of the enemy and not our strengths also, or how British losses were underplayed
• repetitious shots used in the film
• exaggeration, unrealistic, overdramatic presentation, aka the Hollywood Touch
• source of film materials; so actually people just don't know that "captured enemy footage" exists, so they think it's all fake, otherwise, how would we get shots from inside enemy territory
• close-up shots in combat; same thing, they don't know that was actually happening, and they definitely don't know that the cameras in fighter planes are synchronized with the guns to verify enemy loss

Findings on Propaganda

• This is the "most significant finding to emerge from the study"
• People opposed to the ideas in the film were more likely to accept those ideas if the film presented "both sides" p269
• Yet both one-sided and both-sided worked
• In "both sides" studies, introducing opposed arguments that can't be refuted can reduce aggressive tendencies in opposed viewers, but it needs to be done early, or it tends to weaken the conclusion
• And, refute only when an obviously compelling and strictly factual refutation is available; otherwise it's unnecessarily antagonizing; and it should come later, in the hopes the proceeding arguments have softened the opposition.

Notes

• They're using the word "especial" not "special"? 1949
• They are using the word "polygraph" to describe giving someone a like and dislike button to press during the film. The recorded responses are called a polygraph. p104 (204?)