leads to an observable opinion or behavioral response mediated by an attitude. This, in turn, is a tendency, learned through conditioning, to respond in a given way.

Cognitive Theorists

The cognitive theorists such as Leon Festinger, Fritz Heider, Charles Osgood, and Theodore Newcomb have developed consistency models that explain attitude modifications in terms of a strain toward balance in the beliefs and emotions of the individual. It is a homeostatic model in the sense that a person tries to maintain a logical consistency in the things he knows and likes. Thus, if A likes President Nixon but doesn't like his China policy, he will attempt to restore cognitive balance either by changing his attitude toward Nixon or by modifying his attitude toward China. Festinger would add that he is liable to reduce his dissonance by refusing to believe that Nixon holds those views, or by misperceiving the news, or by minimizing the importance of China, or by forgetting what the President said.

These theorists not only explain why and how attitudes are formed and modified but also try to predict the outcome of a communication effort in terms of their theories. The models occasionally lead to incongruous conclusions. As Festinger once pointed out, regardless of how much a child likes Popeye, he can't be made to like spinach. Yet balance theories tend to suggest that he can. Festinger's dissonance theory has some useful applications to the analysis of persuasive communication if one can first measure the attitudes of the target on relevant factors. Sometimes the predicted behavior fails to materialize, which has led to the suggestion that "dissonance theory is almost Freudian in its ability to explain data, no matter how they come out." 15

There are other deductive approaches that attempt to explain why people are influenced by persuasive communication, but they tend to be extensions of the two described above. One is based on the perceptual theory of Solomon Asch and on Muzafer Sherif's assimilation-andcontrast theory, suggesting that attitude change is due to a change in pertinence, or the relative importance of objects, rather than to a change in a person's feelings about the object. Another theory is based on the functional approach of Daniel Katz, who says that a person's attitudes are tied to his need system or ego-defensiveness. Any changes in his attitude would be due to a change in his psychological need. 16

EFFECTIVENESS OF PROPAGANDA

In both theory and practice, persuasive communication has been shown to have an effect. But this is a far cry from evidence of effectiveness. Nor is effective persuasion necessarily the same thing as effective propaganda. If we could select our audience on the basis of certain idiocratic factors-objective physical and personal characteristics peculiar to an individual, such as age, sex, race, education-we might increase by a

statistically significant fraction the proportion of those influenced by a message. But we would have no control over such factors as personality and susceptibility to persuasion, existing values, beliefs and opinions or attitudes toward the objects, subjects and situations involved in the persuasive message. We can choose our communicator but not determine his image. We can select the vehicle of transmission but not the channel of reception of the target of our communication. We could maximize the effect of all these factors for a single individual, especially if we were able to subject him to intensive precommunication analysis. But there is no way that this can be done for the diverse assortment of individuals who normally make up the audience of the mass media, the vehicles most commonly used in international propaganda.

What all this boils down to is that if our persuasive communication ends up with a net positive effect, we must attribute it to luck, not science. The propagandist cannot control the direction or the intensity of impact of his message, if, indeed, he reaches his target at all.

So much for the effectiveness of persuasive communication. Propaganda, as I said earlier, differs from other forms of persuasive communication in its source, its purpose, and its target. The purpose of propaganda may be to influence a government, but it is quite conceivable that the most effective and efficient way to accomplish this is to persuade a particular segment of the population whose composition is totally different from that of the individuals who make up the government. It is further possible that the propagandist is highly effective in his persuasive communication with this segment but that his effectiveness does not carry over to the ultimate objective of his propaganda-influencing the government. The effectiveness of propaganda may, therefore, be even less predictable and controllable than the effectiveness of mere persuasive communication.

Now, prediction and control are two key elements of effectiveness. Another element is an articulable objective. Measurement of effectiveness is, of course, impossible without a specifically stated objective, since we cannot say how well a person has succeeded unless we know what he is trying to do. Put another way, if you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there. Having an objective, the only way a person can successfully attain it is to have control of the vehicle that will take him to it. Finally, the only way he can control the vehicle is by being able to predict what will happen if he moves various knobs and levers in it.

*** **
NOTES

1. A recent example was the feeler by the senior United States diplomat in the United Arab Republic, Donald C. Bergus, whose suggestions to President Sadat regarding a Suez Canal solution were termed his personal views by the State Department when they backfired. The New York Times, June 30, 1971

2. Edward A. Suchman, Evaluative Research: Principles and Practice in Public Service and Social Action Programs (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1967), p. 86.

3. Some have spoken of non-purposive communication-for instance, the reflexive "communi

cation" of bees described by von Frisch-but admit that this is not true communication. See D. O. Hebb and W. R. Thompson, "The Social Significance of Animal Studies," in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aaronson, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2, 2d ed. (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968), pp. 738–740.

Harold E. Burtt, "An Experimental Study of Early Childhood Memory: Final Report," Journal of Genetic Psychology, 58 (1941), pp. 435–439.

5. I have discussed this problem with British, German, Egyptian, Indian, Polish, Czech, and French propaganda analysts, to name just a few, and found that they all faced the same dilemma we did in the United States. At the time, my analysis of the problem had not as yet crystallized in its present form.

6. Cf. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (New York: Free Press, 1962), pp. 76-120; William J. McGuire, "Personality and Susceptibility to Social Influence," in E. F. Borgatta and W. W. Lambert, eds., Handbook of Personality Theory and Research (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968), pp. 1130-1187.

7. Cf. Steven H. Chaffee, "Salience and Homeostasis in Communication Processes," Journalism Quarterly, 44 (Autumn, 1967), pp. 439-444, 453. Leon Festinger has suggested that "when opinions or attitudes are changed through the momentary impact of a persuasive communication, this change, all by itself, is inherently unstable and will disappear or remain isolated unless an environmental or behavioral change can be brought about to support and maintain it” (“Behavioral Support for Opinion Change," Public Opinion Quarterly 28 [Fall, 1964], p. 514). I disagree. Festinger's own dissonance theory, when viewed in conjunction with Fritz Heider's balance theory, points to the probability of collimation, which requires no change in the environment, only a reorientation toward it.

8. John R. Mathiason, “Communication Patterns and Powerlessness Among Urban Poor: Toward the Use of Mass Communication for Rapid Social Change," in Studies in Comparative International Development (St. Louis, Mo.: Washington University Social Studies Institute; forthcoming.)

9. See Robert B. Zajonc, “Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology—Monograph Supplement, vol. 9, no. 2, part 2 (June, 1968).

10. C. W. Sherif, M. Sherif, and R. E. Nebergall, Attitude and Attitude Change (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1965), pp. 201-202.

11. Alfred O. Hero, Mass Media and World Affairs (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1959), p. 50.

12. Joseph T. Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication (New York: Free Press, 1960), pp. 108-109.

13. This finding emerged from a study that was done by USIA in India under my supervision. Intellectuals in India having close personal contacts with Americans were less favorably influenced toward Americans than was a matched sample of Indians without such contacts. On the other hand, they were more favorably influenced toward America as a country. Opinions of USIS Target Groups and Other Literates in Delhi, India, unpublished report (Washington: USIA, Research and Reference Service, September, 1966).

14 A good general review of the literature in this field is provided in Ralph L. Rosnow and Edward J. Robinson, Experiments in Persuasion (New York: Academic Press, 1967). 15. Charles A. Kiesler, Barry E. Collins, and Norman Miller, Attitude Change (New York: John Wiley, 1969), p. 236. This book also provides a good general review of the literature on deductive approaches to persuasive communication effects. 16. See McGuire, op. cit., pp. 1136-1139.

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