| | | Bernays used the scientific approach
Bernays pioneered the public relations industry's use of mass psychology and other social sciences to design its public persuasion campaigns:
"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 about it?
The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits."
He later called this scientific technique of opinion-molding the engineering of consent.
Bernays expanded on Walter Lippmann's concept of stereotype, arguing that predictable elements could be manipulated for mass effects:
But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given [the common man] a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of tabloids and the profundities of history, but quite innocent of original thought.
Each man's rubber stamp is the twin of millions of others, so that when these millions are exposed to the same stimuli, all receive identical imprints. [...]
The amazing readiness with which large masses accept this process is probably accounted for by the fact that no attempt is made to convince them that black is white.
Instead, their preconceived hazy ideas that a certain gray is almost black or almost white are brought into sharper focus.
Their prejudices, notions, and convictions are used as a starting point, with the result that they are drawn by a thread into passionate adherence to a given mental picture.
Not only psychology but sociology played an important role for the public relations counsel, according to Bernays.
The individual is "a cell organized into the social unit. Touch a nerve at a sensitive spot and you get an automatic response from certain specific members of the organism."
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