Alan's Antics

CHAPTER IV
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

THE systematic study of mass psychology re- vealed to students the potentialities of invisible gov- ernment of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter and Le Bon, who approached the subject in a scientific man- ner, and Graham Wallas, Walter Lippmann and others who continued with searching studies of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?